The World After Alice

By Lauren Aliza Green
** Publication Date 2 July 2024 **

4 stars / This review will be posted on goodreads.com today. 

Life is sometimes really hard when you’re a young adult. Sometimes so hard you see no other way out than the terminal one. Such is life for Alice. Alice decides that she’s done. We don’t know why, but we do know how. The prologue gives us that much info. The rest of the novel flips back and forth between before Alice ends her life and after. Culminating in an epilogue.

Alice’s family must go on. Linnie, her mother, goes back to school. Nick, her dad, finds himself with a new family. Benji, her brother, ends up with Alice’s best and lifelong friend, Morgan. Which is an utter and complete surprise to both Benji’s and Morgan’s families and friends. Benji and Morgan wait until the very last moment to share this with their families. In fact, they announce their relationship just before the wedding invitations are about to go out. 

So the novel unfolds with the tales of all the starring players and what’s happened in the time since Alice stepped off that bridge. Each person has secrets that will be revealed during the wedding weekend. Secrets that could change life moving forward for every one of them. 

What a great character study of how people treat one another while we’re alive, and how we react after they are gone. Alice is the central figure in all these stories, and she had a different affect on each of their futures. It’s a sad novel. I didn’t really feel as though anyone had the happy-wrap-things-up ending. Maybe except for Alice. It’s beautifully written and has amazing depth. A really good piece of debut fiction.