Afterlove Review: Is It Worth Reading?

Verdict: A Brighton first-love story that turns into a grim reaper ghost story at the halfway mark, with a romance that lands and an ending that will wreck you, held back by a slow first half and reaper lore that never gets the room it needs.

Best for: Readers who want a tender YA sapphic love story with real grief in it, and who are willing to trade a guaranteed happy ending for a bittersweet one.

Heat level: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5: young adult, no romance.io entry, intimacy on the page but not graphic)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.7/5: a 3.95 Goodreads average across 17,017 ratings, pulled down by a slow start and reapers readers wanted more of)

Tropes: First love, love after death, grim reapers, ghost story, forbidden contact, class difference, grief, found family, before and after structure, bittersweet ending.

Afterlove by Tanya Byrne is a standalone young adult novel, first published in the UK by Hodder Children’s Books in July 2021 and in the US by Godwin Books in September 2022, and it’s a sapphic paranormal love story set in Brighton, where Ash Persaud falls hard for Poppy Morgan, dies in a car crash on New Year’s Eve, and is drafted into a small crew of teenage grim reapers whose one firm rule is that nobody they knew in life may recognize them, a rule Ash has no plan to keep.

It sits at a 3.95 average across 17,017 Goodreads ratings and 3,103 written reviews, with a near identical 3.96 on StoryGraph and a low 4% did-not-finish rate there. It was shortlisted for the YA Book Prize in 2022. The reviews split along the book’s own halfway line: plenty of readers love the before and grieve through the after, and a vocal group wanted the reaper story to start sooner and go deeper. That split is the thing to understand before you start.

What Is Afterlove About?

Afterlove is a YA sapphic novel first and a ghost story second, and the order matters. Publishers place it at 12 and up in the UK and 14 and up in the US, so expect teenage first love, family and school, not adult romance. The ghost element is unusual because the ghost is the narrator’s own future: Ash is the one who dies, and the second half is told from the far side of that line, in a Brighton that has gone cold and grey for winter.

Ash is Indo-Guyanese British, goes to Whitehawk, a state school with a rough reputation, and lives in a loud, loving family where her mum isn’t at ease with who she is. Poppy is a white redhead from Roedean, the posh private school, and to Ash she looks like a whole other world. The book is split into Before and After, so you spend real time with the two of them alive before the reaping starts, which is exactly why the second half hurts and exactly why some readers think it takes too long to get there.

What Makes This YA Sapphic Ghost Story Work

The first love: Readers return again and again to the giddy, believable feel of Ash and Poppy’s early months, and Kirkus calls their first love endearing and realistic.
The reaper rules: Reapers guide the newly dead to Charon and his boat, they’re only seen as themselves by people who are about to die, and contact with anyone from their old life is forbidden. That last rule turns a ghost story into a forbidden love story.
Ash’s family: Her parents and younger sister are the most praised supporting characters, and several readers single out the warmth of the Indo-Guyanese home life.
The grief: Byrne began the book after her mother died, and readers feel it. Crying at the end is the single most common reaction in the reviews I read.
A real ending: It’s a standalone. No sequel, no cliffhanger, and an ending Byrne says she wanted to be honest and still hopeful.

Book Synopsis

Ash Persaud is a hopeless romantic who has never had anything to be romantic about. Then, one Brighton summer, she meets Poppy Morgan. Poppy is from the other end of the city in every way that counts: a different school, a different kind of money, a different kind of confidence. None of it slows them down. There are first dates and day trips, a gallery afternoon in London, the seafront at night, and a love that feels to Ash like the start of the rest of her life.

The rest of her life turns out to be very short. On New Year’s Eve a car hits her. For a moment it looks like she walked away from it. She didn’t. What she gets instead is an invitation. Brighton has a small crew of grim reapers, run by Deborah and including Dev and Esen, and their work is to collect the city’s dead and walk them down to the water, where a ferryman waits. Reapers are meant to drift through the living world unnoticed. Above all, they are not to go looking for the people who loved them.

Ash goes looking anyway. She finds Poppy, and Poppy, against every rule, knows her at once. Now Ash has a second chance that she isn’t allowed to have, a crew who could lose everything if she’s caught, and a growing fear about why Poppy can see her at all. How much time do they have, and what is Ash willing to break to make it longer?

My Review

The love story is the reason to read this, and it’s very good. Byrne writes teenage first love the way it feels from the inside, all nerves and plans and wanting the whole world to know, and she gives it enough pages that you’re fully invested before anything goes wrong. When the crash comes, it lands like a real loss rather than a plot device. Kirkus put it simply: “Ash and Poppy are so full of heart.” That matches what I found in the reader reviews.

The second strength is the family and the place. Ash’s parents and little sister give the book its warmth, and the switch from summer Brighton to the empty winter seafront is a clever way to show grief without spelling it out. Bookstacked’s reviewer said Byrne made it feel “cosy, real, and familiar,” and that’s a fair line for the Before half in particular.

Where it struggles is structure, and this isn’t my personal gripe. It’s the most repeated complaint across Goodreads, StoryGraph and the blogs. Ash doesn’t die until around the midpoint, and a lot of readers who came for the reaper premise on the cover felt they spent half the book waiting. Once she’s dead, the reaper world stays thin: Dev and Esen get less development than readers wanted, Deborah’s threats never quite pay off, and several readers note the setup borrows a lot from the TV show Dead Like Me. Kirkus and Publishers Weekly both flag a version of the same issue, saying the friends and family from the first half get sidelined and the reaper friendships stay underdeveloped, which is rare agreement between trade and readers. Smaller recurring notes: the romance moves fast enough for some to call it insta-love, the prologue gets reused almost word for word later, and Ash’s Doc Martens get mentioned so often that it became a running joke in the reviews.

One expectation to reset. The UK edition carries the line “queer dark romance” on its listing, and the blurb sells a reaper story. What you get is a gentle, sad YA love story with a paranormal second half. None of the reviews I read call it dark. If “dark romance” is what drew you, you’ll be surprised; if you were worried by it, don’t be. And if you need a guaranteed happy ending, read the FAQ below first.

My honest note: A lovely first-love story with a ghost story bolted on halfway, and the bolt shows. If you’re in it for the romance and the grief, it’ll get you; if you’re in it for the reapers, you’ll want more than it gives.

Element	In Afterlove
Central relationship	Ash Persaud and Poppy Morgan: Whitehawk girl and Roedean girl, first love that outlasts death
Core tropes	First love, grim reapers, forbidden contact, class difference, grief, found family
Setting	Brighton and London, from late summer to a cold, out of season winter
Heat level	2/5: YA, intimacy on the page but not graphic
Series	Standalone. Bittersweet, open ending with no on-page HEA
Content notes	Death of a main character in a car accident, grief and loss, mentions of suicide and overdose, homophobia from a parent, racism, a parent’s illness, strong language, non-graphic sexual content

How Spicy Is Afterlove?

A 2/5. I couldn’t find a romance.io entry for it, which is the norm for young adult titles and tells you it isn’t being catalogued as adult romance at all. The number comes from the publishers’ age ranges (12 and up in the UK, 14 and up in the US) and from what readers report is on the page: the relationship becomes physical in the Before half, and the one reviewer who describes it calls the intimacy lovely but not graphic.

If anything needs flagging in advance, it’s the language rather than the heat, since at least one reviewer notes the strong swearing. Beyond that, nobody I found flags sexual content a teen reader would be surprised by. For other YA sapphic reads in this low band, She Drives Me Crazy sits at 1/5 and Tell Me How You Really Feel at 2/5.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a first-love story with real tenderness, you like grief handled with care rather than spectacle, you enjoy a paranormal twist that serves the romance, and you can live with a bittersweet ending.

You may want to skip it if: you need the romance to have an on-page happy ending, you picked it up for the reapers and want them from chapter one, you want a fully built afterlife with tight rules, or fast first-love intensity reads as insta-love to you.

In short: a love story that knows exactly how to break your heart, with a ghost story that needed another hundred pages.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

There’s no single viral moment behind this book that I could verify. Byrne’s publisher has since marketed her next novel as coming from “the author of TikTok favourite Afterlove,” but I didn’t trace that claim to specific videos, so treat it as the publisher’s word. What is clear is the long tail: more than 17,000 Goodreads ratings for a YA novel from 2021, a YA Book Prize 2022 shortlisting, and a steady stream of blog reviews from 2021 through 2023. On the trade side, both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly reviewed the US edition positively, and neither marked it with a star. There’s also an audiobook narrated by Aysha Kala, running about ten and a half hours (10 hours 31 minutes on the US listing, 10 hours 36 on the UK one). I didn’t find listener comments on the narration specifically.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The emotional hit first and most consistently. “Cried” is the recurring word, and two separate reviewers compare it to They Both Die at the End. Then the romance, which readers describe as giddy and real, with the first months of Ash and Poppy together named over and over as the best part. Ash’s family comes next, praised for warmth and for showing an Indo-Guyanese British household without fuss. A smaller group praises the reaper lore itself, and one reviewer who enjoyed the Dead Like Me parallel liked it for exactly that reason, which is notable because others raise the same parallel as a complaint.

What readers argue about and complain about: Pacing, above everything. The death arrives around the midpoint and the most common critical note is a long wait for the premise the blurb sells. The thin reaper world is the second theme: Dev and Esen blur together, Deborah’s warnings come to nothing, and the rules feel sketched rather than built. Third: the After half feels rushed, covering a short stretch and then jumping eleven months to wrap up. Beyond that, recurring notes on insta-love, the reused prologue, Ash’s family and best friend fading from her thoughts too quickly after her death, and repeated small details like the Doc Martens. Single voices raise other points: one reviewer objects to the Harry Potter references given J.K. Rowling’s views on trans people, one found Poppy a manic pixie dream girl in the second half, and one 1-star review flags editing errors and comments it read as transphobic. Opinions divide on the prose, which most call lovely and one reviewer found too heavy with metaphor.

The standalone question worth asking first: it resolves and needs nothing further. There’s no sequel and no series. If you finish and want more Byrne, her 2024 YA novel In the Shallows is the obvious next stop, but go in knowing it sits at 3.68 across 863 Goodreads ratings, more than a quarter star lower and with a fraction of the readers, and that several reviewers say it reads as realistic fiction despite fantasy tags.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Afterlove have a happy ending?

Not a conventional one. The book ends bittersweet and open, with hope of a reunion rather than a reunion on the page, and several readers say they cried through the final chapters. Byrne has said she wanted the ending to be honest but still hopeful.

Is Afterlove a ghost story?

Yes, of a kind. Ash dies halfway through and spends the second half as a grim reaper, walking unrecognized among the living in Brighton and guiding the newly dead to Charon’s boat. Readers who expect reaping from page one should know it doesn’t start until around the midpoint.

Is Afterlove young adult?

Yes. Hachette lists it for readers 12 and up in the UK, and Kirkus and Publishers Weekly place the US edition at 14 and up. The leads are teenagers at two Brighton schools.

How spicy is Afterlove?

A 2/5. There’s no romance.io entry, which is normal for YA, and the intimacy that is on the page is described by readers as tender rather than graphic. Strong swearing is more of a content note than the heat is.

Is Afterlove part of a series?

No. It’s a standalone with no sequel. Byrne’s next YA novel, In the Shallows, is a separate book.

Is there an Afterlove audiobook?

Yes. Aysha Kala narrates it, and listings put the runtime at about ten and a half hours (10 hours 31 minutes for the US edition, 10 hours 36 minutes for the UK one).

If You Loved Afterlove, Read These Next

For another bittersweet sapphic story where a ghost changes everything, A Fate Worse Than Drowning trades Brighton for an 1861 lighthouse island and keeps the hopeful, tear-stained ending. If you want the ghost story with a happy ending and an adult romance, With All My Haunted Heart puts a witch and a haunted bed-and-breakfast at the center. And for YA sapphic first love without the grief, She Drives Me Crazy keeps the teen intensity and swaps death for a fender bender.

For more like this, browse our sapphic paranormal romance list or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Afterlove wants to be a love story strong enough to survive death, and for a lot of readers it is. The first love is warm and believable, Ash’s family gives it a home, and the grief is written by someone who knows it. It’s also slow to reach its own premise, thin on the reaper world it promises, and rushed once it gets there. Whether that trade works depends on what you came for: if it’s the romance and a good cry, it delivers; if it’s a ghost story with rules and stakes, you’ll want more. Check Afterlove on Amazon

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Afterlove ranks as a heartfelt YA sapphic ghost story. Its first love and its grief are the strengths, and its slow start and thin reaper lore hold it back. Read it for Ash and Poppy rather than for the afterlife.