As an indifferent reader of stories in the paranormal genre, I found The Mortician’s Daughter to be just okay.
It has a young adult vibe, although it’s not marketed as such, which might surprise some readers. The book cover alone implies something darker awaits inside, but it never truly comes to fruition.
The story essentially focuses on the main character, Aria Jasper, who as she turns twenty two discovers that nothing about her family or indeed herself is what she thought it was. It turns out her father isn’t just a funeral director, but also the director of Aftercorps. A company whose job it is to help new ghosts transition to whatever comes next. Suddenly expected to pledge herself to Aftercorps, Aria finds herself no longer pursuing a music career. Instead, she’s in Aftercorps training alongside another student, Sloane – who is much more enthusiastic for her new role than Aria is ever likely to be.
The biggest niggle in the book for me was that there is very little in the of actual plot. A lot of the learning about Aftercorps is done in a classroom setting and comes across as more telling than showing. It also starts to become infuriating that no one in Aria’s life will actually explain to her what has been and is happening to her. To the extent that her mother sinks into a depressive episode, and all but abandons Aria to deal with her new reality alone, at least initially. And all because she thought Aria had escaped inheriting the ability to communicate with ghosts.
Family secrets and lies are at the core of this paranormal offering, but unfortunately, I found the plot to be lackluster and missing the depth that I like in my stories, whether they are young adult or not.
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