Book Review: Beyond by T.P. Boje

Beyond
Afterlife #1
Author: T.P. Boje
Reading Level: YA
Genre: Paranormal
Released: September 9th 2011
Review Source: Author
Available: Amazon

Summary:(from goodreads) Have you ever wondered where you go when you die?

Meghan is 16 when it happens to her. She wakes up on a flying steamboat on her way to a school run by Angels in a white marble castle. It is a school everybody has to go to before they are let into Heaven. On the boat she meets Mick who has been dead for more than a hundred years but still looks like a teenager. He helps her past the difficult beginning at the new school in a new world. One day some of Meghan's roommates find a mirror in the cellar of the school and they persuade her to go through it with them - well knowing it is strictly against the rules of the school. Meghan ends up back on earth where she meets Jason. But Jason is in danger and Meghan know something important. Something that is a matter of life and death. Soon she is forced to choose between the two worlds. The one she belongs to now and the one she left.

Beyond is the first novel in T. P. Boje's Afterlife series and is great for children and teenagers ages 9 and up.

I am usually creeped out by ghost stories, but "beyond" wasn't spooky nor did I fear that reading it would give me nightmares. The cover is a tad bit creepy, though, a ghostly white hand reaching out to touch another white hand. **chills**

In beyond, we are introduced to Methan, a 16 year-old who has died. She doesn't know how she died, but she explains what it is like to be a spirit and that your spirit leave the body exactly two seconds before the physical body dies. So all spirits wear the same clothes they had on the day they died and look just like they did when they died.

In this first book of the Afterlife Series, Meghan starts school at the Academy which is run by angels. She meets a few other spirits who become friends, acquaintances and a love interest (or two), and of course, some enemies. Early on in the story, some of Meghan's roommates find a mirror in the cellar of the school and they get her to go through it with her. This is, as they all know, very much against the rules, but they do it anyway. They go through to earth and Meghan meets a boy, Jason. She like him and wants to spend time with him, even it if means continuing to break the rules. Jason is in danger and Meghan must decide if and how to help him, so she is forced to choose between the two worlds. I did have a hard time getting a feel for the depth of the relationship between Meghan and Jason because we don't really see their relationship grow through the story. It was hard to see how she would care deeply enough that she would risk her new life for him, when their time together seemed to happen over the course of one or two chapters.

I enjoyed reading about Meghan's world and getting to know the characters in this story, and I am anxious to read the next book.