Hereafter #2.

Arise
von Tara Hudson

Bewertet mit 3 Sternen

"A beautiful story but I still can't see myself calling the ghost-human-love story an ideal romance.... one day Joshua will have to move on and marry somebody who is a living human being and Amelia will have to decide to leave Joshua and choose the Hereafter or that other place."

Arise is the follow-up novel to Hereafter. Joshua and Amelia's story captured my heart in the first novel, it was a five star read for me. Hereafter proved to be one of my favorite ghost stories.

We pick up with Joshua and Amelia a few months after their showdown with the evil ghost Eli. With that dilemma out of the way, Amelia and Joshua just have each other to focus on with no worries, right? Wrong. With this huge problem out of the way, (or so we hope) the underlying issues of their problematic relationship come to the fore. How can such a relationship survive when Amelia will always be a ghost and Joshua will graduate high-school, go to college and eventually want to start a family? Joshua has a positive outlook, but Amelia is not buying it. She starts to think that taking herself out of his life, even though it would be heart-breaking, is the best thing for him. Also, more problems are becoming apparent with Amelia now experiencing frightening nightmares and uncontrollable materializations.

This book seems to focus a lot on Amelia. Amelia's struggles with being a ghost and her indecision about being in love with Joshua and the whole EVIL PEOPLE WANT TO KILL HER thing. I really liked watching Amelia grow and change throughout the novel. Arise doesn't really focus on Joshua and Amelia and their undying love for each other and that's what I was missing while reading. The book is more suspenseful and mysterious and adventurous.

While Arise was not as fun as its predecessor, I still liked it.

Hoping for a good ending for Amelia and Joshua in the third and last book.