Under the Whispering Door made me cry lol

 

Besties… I’m afraid the slay has in fact been slain…

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So, I’m talking about Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune today, and I’ve been very confused about the release schedule of this book. Because I got this as a US import from an indie bookshop – Portal, in York. And I’m not exactly sure when it came out in the UK, but I’ve got it. I was also confused as to what kind of book this was, because I’ve read The Extraordinaries by Klune, and that was YA, but there was a lovely bit in the front of the book saying ‘For Young Adults’, and then ‘For Adults’, with this book in there, so I at least knew I wasn’t getting into YA expecting to get YA.

I would also like to mention before anything else that there’s an author’s note in the beginning. It mentions how this book talks about life, death in different forms (including suicide) and grief. And it finishes up by saying, “Please read with care.” So, if that is something that you believe you should avoid, I’m giving you that warning now.

Our friend, Blurb-ara, she says that when a reaper collects Wallace from his own funeral, he begins to suspect he might be dead. Then Hugo, the owner of a tea shop says he’ll help him cross over, he decides he definitely dead. He’s then given seven days to live a life he’s barely lived. I read this and I was like, “Oh, this has some similarities to the book I’m currently working on and planning to query soon.” I did have a brief moment of panic thinking, “Crap, it’s too similar to mine.” But then I thought for literally one second, and realised the only similarity is the main character being a ghost who’s going to cross over. Like, my book and this one explore very different things. Mine is YA, and this one isn’t. And as I read the book, those worries did fade as I realised how different the two books are.

So, we open on chapter one with our main character Wallace, and within this very first chapter, we get shown that he is a monumental asshole. He’s literally firing a woman from his law firm because she filed something two hours after its deadline. But then at the end of the chapter he dies. That’s not really a spoiler, since the blurb literally says he gets collected by a reaper. And the fun thing is that he gets collected from his own funeral. This funeral which shows Wallace what a sad little life he had – with all the grace of a reversing dump truck. Like, the only people who attend are his ex-wife and three partners from the law firm, that’s it. To give a specific quote, on page 108, in his thoughts, he says, “What else was there to life aside from success? Nothing, really.” And that told me exactly the kind of person he was when he was alive.

But we do meet Mei, his reaper, who is out on her first solo reaping, and she tells him she’s taking him to meet Hugo, the ferryman who’s going to help him cross over. One thing I’ll mention now is that Mei, and all the other characters honestly, kept cracking these awful jokes and puns about being dead. Clearly, they were doing it to help the dead people come to terms with things, because one of the characters mentions that “If you’re laughing, you’re not crying, mostly.” There’s a few in quick succession on pages 122/3 that I just want to include, because, for as awful as they were, I loved them: What is a ghost’s favourite fruit? Booberries. What kind of a street does a ghost live on? A dead end. And finally: What does a ghost do to stay safe in a car? Puts on its sheet belt…

But Mei brings Wallace to this tea shop, the one that’s on the front cover and where like 95% of the story takes place. He ends up meeting Hugo, Nelson (the grandad) and Apollo (the dog) who, along with Mei and Wallace, make up the main cast of characters. In chapter six we learn that Hugo, the ferryman, is gay, which we love, and there were moments where I was like, “Okay werk, does Wallace have a little crush on Hugo?” And then in chapter 12, we get the confirmation that Wallace is in fact bi, which kind of told me he did.

We learn a little later that Mei, as a reaper, was essentially assigned to Hugo. So, I’ve sort of assumed that the order of things is that a person dies, the reaper comes and takes them to the ferryman, then the ferryman helps them cross over – so in this, it’s Hugo’s job to help Wallace pretty much realise how sad his little life was. But it turns out that Mei isn’t Hugo’s first reaper, we learn he had another reaper before her. As Wallace and Hugo get to know each other, Hugo mentions that he “made mistakes”, so since we knew he was gay, my first thought was that he probably fell in love with the reaper or something. Now, I won’t spoil anything, but I’ll just say, when we find out what the mistakes were, and what happened to his other reaper. Bitch! It hit. And I was kind of gagged by it.

As part of the story, and Wallace spending his time in the tea shop, another ghost ends up turning up. There’s this one line that the other ghost says that I want to include here. “You don’t tell me what I want to hear.” And the ghost says this to Mei. And I thought this was a really interesting thing to include in the story, because we get told that different people accept death in different ways, so I think it was a really good choice to include this other ghost to actually show us this difference, as opposed to just telling us. As another little addendum, there’s another character, Cameron, they’re not in the story all that much, but they serve as another example for showing the reader how different people accepted their deaths, and I just really appreciated it.

Another little point was that when Wallace had a crush on Hugo was when this other ghost turns up at the tea shop, so Wallace is no longer getting Hugo’s undivided attention. And I loved this, because it was fun seeing Wallace going from this unloving asshole to, basically, this immature kid, getting jealous because the boy he likes is paying attention to someone else.

That bit in the blurb when it said he is given one week to cross over? I completely forgot about it while I was reading the book. That doesn’t come around until there’s only like 100 pages of the book. And that’s genius, because it was like a major point of conflict that I had completely forgotten about until it came back around and punched my teeth out. Like the book got me into this comfortable space and said surprise, bitch, I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me. And the events that followed in those final seven days? Bitch. The rumours may say I cried at chapter 21, then at chapter 22, then at the epilogue.

One bit that made me stop for a moment was on page 354 where the word “gooseflesh” is used for what I know to be goosebumps. Like when something makes you shudder and puts those little bumps on your arms. Goosebumps. This book called them gooseflesh, and I’ve never heard that in my life, so that was a little weird to me.

I will say, I was happy with the ending, it worked well with how my brain works and how I live in this world where I want utopian endings, but I would have been satisfied with how I originally thought it was going to end.

I’ll insert a spoiler warning here, and another patch of bold text where the spoilers end.

I thought Wallace was going to go through the whispering door at the end and, even though my brain is like, make everything gay, I would have been okay with him leaving. I would have been satisfied with it, like the story would have been over. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not mad that he didn’t leave, and the book ended gay. I’m just saying I wouldn’t have been annoyed, upset or unsatisfied had he left.

The spoilers end here.

Am I going to re-read this book? Absolutely. Although probably not anytime soon. One, because there’s a bunch of other stuff I want to read right now. But two, mainly because of how heavily this book talks about life, death and grief. It’s definitely important to have these discussions, they’re just not something that I see myself wanting to be a part of all the time. You know, sometimes I want space to read a mushy rom-com that’s got nothing else going on in it. Regardless of that, however, this book was really good, like, in contention of book of the year for me good. And unless anything I’ve written here has put you off, I’d definitely recommend it.

Okay, bye!