I feel like the author is saying “Yes, this is basically ‘Dead Like Me,’ but not exactly notice all these minor differences.” Klune, perhaps unavoidably, sidetracks into world-building, as he establishes the rules of a world where dead people make a pit stop at Charon’s Crossing Tea and Treats, in the woods outside a small town. In Chapter 2, Wallace drops dead of a heart attack before prime heart-attack age and we see his perspective from outside his body. To his small credit, he doesn’t enjoy it – he’s not mustache-twirling evil – but he can’t be bothered with other people’s feelings. In the opening chapter, he fires an otherwise good paralegal for one mistake. We start with Wallace Price, a lawyer who is all about the work. The strength is the characters, not so much because they are original but rather because Klune loves them and loves how they love each other. In his latest young-adult novel, predictability outstrips his imagination, and his insistence on writing the way people speak (with choked-off partial statements) undercuts the poetic emotions and philosophizing. Just as clearly, he’s still learning how to write. “Under the Whispering Door” (2021) is clearly written from the heart, as TJ Klune uses the outlet of fantasy fiction to deal with his grief over the loss of a loved one (something he confirms in the afterword).
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