Book Review: Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

TJ Klune is without a single shred of a doubt my favourite author discovery of all time. I have blazed through the Green Creek Series, House in the Cerulean Sea, The Extraordinaries, and now, the master of Found Family did it again with Under the Whispering Door.

Wallace Price was not a very nice man. A lawyer by trade, he was ruthless in getting whatever he wanted, and if someone got in his way, be it his long-term secretary, ex-wife, or law firm partners, he cut them out of his life without a second thought. So, when he wakes up at his own funeral after suffering a major heart attack, it's a bit of a surprise. Even more so when he discovers that the four people who bothered to show up to his funeral can't see him- but Mei can.

Mei is a reaper who brings Wallace to Charon's Crossing Tea Shop, where he meets the ferryman, Hugo, who will help him on his journey to the afterlife. Also inhabiting the tea shop are Apollo, Hugo's deceased dog, and Nelson, his grandfather and closest friend (also dead, just to be clear.) Through trial, error, and having his butt handed to him a couple of times, Hugo eventually does enough self-reflection to come to terms with the fact that he wasn't a very nice person in life, and seeks to make amends.

In addition to being as beautifully written as all of Klune's other works, Whispering Door is also full of prose that makes you stop, think, and yes, sometimes shed a tear. A couple of my favourites:

'"I can't grieve for myself."

Hugo shook his head slowly. "Of course you can. We do it all the time, regardless of if we're alive or not, over the small things and the big things. Everyone is a little bit sad all the time."

And

"...No matter what you do, no matter what kind of life you live, good or bad or somewhere in between, it's always going to be waiting for you. From the moment you're born, you're dying."

And

"He hoped wherever he was going that there'd still be the sun and the moon and the stars. He'd spent the majority of his life with his head turned down. It seemed only fair that eternity would allow him to raise his face toward the sky."

This book made me cry. How could it not? I think we all can see part of ourselves in Wallace. Who have we hurt to get where we are, to accomplish what we wanted to do?

Ultimately, this is a book about grief. This is a book about coming to terms with the life you lived and the people you hurt along the way. This is a book about love and regrets and that taste on your tongue when you realize, when you can really see where you went wrong in the past and know that no matter what, some things just cannot be fixed.

Also tea. It's also about tea.