Book: Life A.D.: Life After Dez by Michelle E. Reed

Published December 2013 by Month9 Books|366 pages

Where I Got It: Kindle store

Series: Atman City #1

Genre: YA Paranormal

You can find Life, A.D.: Life After Dez on goodreads and Michelle E. Reed on twitter and her website

Goodreads Summary: 

In Life, A.D. you have two choices: join the program or face the consequences.

Seventeen-year-old Dez Donnelly crashes headlong into fate on the side of a rural highway, her life ending in a violent collision of steel and screaming brakes. The train that delivers her newly departed soul to the crossroads of the afterlife won’t be carrying her to the sweet hereafter until she accepts her abrupt end and learns to let go of the life she’ll never finish.

Her new reality is conduct manuals, propaganda, and unrelenting staff, all part of a system to ease her transition from life to death, while helping her earn her way out of limbo. Atman City, beautiful and enticing, is an ever-present temptation that is strictly off limits to underage souls. The promise of adventure proves too strong, and beneath the city’s sheen of ethereal majesty, Dez discovers a world teeming with danger.

Welcome to Life, A.D. where being dead doesn’t mean you’re safe, and the only thing harder than getting out of limbo is getting through it.

What I Thought:

I don’t read many books dealing with the afterlife, but this is definitely a more unusual and refreshing take on it.  I’m definitely looking forward to reading the next book!

At first, I wasn’t sure what was going on, because Dez is on a train that will take her to Atman City, the place where she’ll work through her life and transition to death after her unexpected death.  I didn’t realize at first that she was dead, but once things started to be explained, it was a lot less confusing.  I like that she’s with other kids who died unexpectedly, and that they have to work towards getting out of limbo.

What’s really intriguing about this afterlife is that there is more to Atman City than what we see, especially the city itself. Mostly because we don’t get to see much of it, and what we do see has a lot darker than what I ever expected.  I mean, there are definitely some unsavory people in Atman City, and I am very curious to see how that will factor into the rest of the series, because it feels like it’s important to the story.

Dez is definitely interesting and she’s pretty resistant to getting out of limbo, even though she clearly doesn’t want to be there. But I also understand why she’s so resistant, because she’s so young when she dies.  But I also feel like she does make some pretty good progress in accepting what’s happened, and that she’ll become even more accepting of it in the next book. But I still didn’t completely feel for her, even though I feel like I should because she’s been through a lot of horrible stuff. I think it’s because she’s so resistant to acceptance that it was a tad bit hard to completely care about her.

This world is definitely intricate and I like that so much is explained without feeling like a massive info-dump.  Everything was described so well, and I knew exactly what everything looked like and what this world was like.

Let’s Rate It:

Life, A.D. is definitely intriguing and intricate, and I like that it’s such a refreshing take on the afterlife!  I didn’t completely love Dez, but I’m hoping she grows on me in the rest of the series. Life, A.D. gets 3 stars.