Book Review: Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune
Under the Whispering Door
Author: TJ Klune
Published: September 21, 2021
Audiobook
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Read: October 15-25, 2021
Jessica’s Rating: 3 stars
Book Description:
When a reaper comes to collect Wallace Price from his own funeral, Wallace suspects he really might be dead.
Instead of leading him directly to the afterlife, the reaper takes him to a small village. On the outskirts, off the path through the woods, tucked between mountains, is a particular tea shop, run by a man named Hugo. Hugo is the tea shop’s owner to locals and the ferryman to souls who need to cross over.
But Wallace isn’t ready to abandon the life he barely lived. With Hugo’s help he finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life.
When the Manager, a curious and powerful being, arrives at the tea shop and gives Wallace one week to cross over, Wallace sets about living a lifetime in seven days.
Under the Whispering Door is a contemporary fantasy about a ghost who refuses to cross over and the ferryman he falls in love with.
Jessica’s Review:
I absolutely adored the audiobook of Cerulean Sea, so I was looking forward to Whispering Door, but for some reason it did not work for me. Maybe it was that Fantasy isn’t one of my typical genres, maybe I wasn’t in the mindset needed for listening to this one, maybe it was the narrator… I’m not really sure. It could also be that I did not connect with Wallace as he was a bit of an a**hole, but that is the point of the book and his change over the course of the novel, but still… This will be yet another book I will need to actually read in the future versus listening to the audiobook.
The beginning of the novel did have my attention, as did the last portion, but I seemed to tune out the rest. Whispering Door does have a similar feel to Cerulean Sea and it seems that the two books are in the same universe as there were a couple of references to Cerulean Sea. Maybe I was wanting more adorable kids and we just don’t get them in this novel.
There is a trigger warning at the beginning of the novel in the form of an author’s note that the book deals various types of death including suicide. I will definitely give this one a physical read at some point in the future, but for now Whispering Door receives 3 stars.