My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I had some debate with myself about whether I would read the second book in the Afterlife Calls series, and in the end curiosity got the better of me, but I have to admit that this will be the end of my journey with these characters.
Once again, there were errors in the book which couldn’t be ignored (Ben wearing black sneakers, black Converse, green sneakers – all in the same scene and over a couple of pages) In some instances the incorrect word has been used in sentences, drawing the reader out of the story and creating some annoyance.
The relationships seems more muddled in this second book – almost to the point where it seemed that Edie was the adult and Niamh the teenager – I got quite frustrated with Niamh because of all her ‘poor me’ whining about her powers not being as strong as Edie’s, and her mum being such a pain and she likes Ben but he likes Jaya – quite frankly she needed a good slap around the face by about half way through the book.
The ‘spells’ they cast seemed quite childish – four line rhyming which had me rolling my eyes. Also, the ‘fiddlesticks’ and ‘frazzles’ Edie and Niamh used instead of a good old swear word made it seem more like I was reading an Enid Blyton novel than a modern tale.
There was no real ending to the story, it just kind of petered out with a shaky lead in to the third book in the series. Unfortunately, due to the abovementioned issues, I have no interest in following through with the story because I really felt that by the end, I just wasn’t connected enough to the characters to particularly care what happens to them in the future. Probably worth a 2 1/2 star score, but no more, which is sad to say because I think the writer does reveal some writing talent, but seemed to have gotten bogged down with pacing and an overabundance of angst this time.



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