WHAT COMES AFTER

In this darkly comical, heartfelt novel, a cynical sixteen-year-old girl has only ninety days to remember how she died and finally make peace with her mother to escape spending eternity adrift in a vast nothingness. For fans of Adam Silvera and The Good Place.

No one could be more disappointed about Mari's sudden death than Mari, herself. And if she ever thought about the afterlife, she certainly didn't think it would be a suburban enclave called Paradise Gate or that the biggest problem to plague her in life would follow her into the great beyond: her recently deceased mother, Faye. But that is exactly who greets her when Mari opens her eyes in the In Betweenwhere the newly dead with no religious affiliation come to work out the unfinished business of their lives so they can ascend to whatever's next. Mari realizes quickly Faye is her unfinished business and in order to ascend and join her loving grandparents, she'll have to make peace with and forgive her dysfunctional mother for being no mother at all But there's too much to forgive: never holding down a steady job, never having a stable home, Mari having to constantly change schools and in the end, Faye choosing her criminal boyfriend over Mari. It's a lot to sort through, but Mari tries to keep her eye on the ballattending classes at the Center like Youga and sending grief scarves sailing in Expressive Arts to move her vibe tracker from an angry unsettled red to an ascend-worthy greenall the while trying to remember how she died and deal with Faye, who, of course, is in danger of being kicked out of Paradise Gate altogether. But then Mari discovers in addition to mother drama, there's even friend drama and boy drama to be found in the afterlife and none are good for her vibes. Even worse is the suspicion that Paradise Gate isn't at all what it purports to be.and revolution may be afoot. When Katie Bayerl isn't penning stories, she can be found dancing, writing about social causes, or herding a trio of (mostly well-behaved) cats. Katie holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is on the creative writing faculty at Grub Street. Her previous young adult novel, A Psalm for Lost Girls, earned two starred reviews and was a Texas Library Association selection. Katie lives in Boston, Massachusetts.