TW for this review and the book: murder, suicide, discussion of death of both people and pets. Author TJ Klune also includes a similar warning at the very beginning of the book which I greatly admire.
Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s reading more. Maybe it’s just accepting my own emotions, but Cannonball Read has made a liar out of me. Books never used to make me cry. Rarely even tear up. I would feel things, sure. But not cry. That was a response strictly reserved for visual media. But here I am: holding on to my tear stained copy of Under the Whispering Door because this book made me utterly weep.
Wallace Price is an asshole. And he’s dead, suddenly. A strange woman named Mei, who calls herself a Reaper, escorts him from his own (sparsely attended) funeral to Charon’s Crossing, a charming and cozy tea shop in a small, nondescript town. There he finds Hugo, the tea shop owner and ferryman, whose job it is to help transition the recently departed over to the other side. Hugo and Mei live at the tea shop along with the ghosts of Hugo’s grandfather, Nelson, and dog, Apollo. And now Wallace, too.
During his stay at Charon’s Crossing, Wallace is forced to self-reflect for the first time in his life. I mean, what else is he going to do? He’s a ghost. He spends time with the rest of the permanent residents of Charon’s Crossing as well as the transient ghosts and patrons of the tea shop. And he’s falling in love with Hugo, the main driver of Wallace’s improvement. Klune has a way with writing extraordinarily patient, kind, and insightful gay men. He did it with Arthur Parnassus in The House in the Cerulean Sea, and he’s done it again now. Are these two characters more or less the same? Yes. Do I care at all? Nope! Hugo is a great character who helps guide those in his care to a place of understanding and acceptance in order to cross over to the other side, whatever it may hold. It’s a messy, emotional process for everyone, but Hugo handles it with aplomb.
Please don’t think that this book about death is a total downer. There are certainly heart-breakingly tragic moments, but I also laughed multiple times. I cheered out loud. I gasped. And I cried. Reading this book was like standing on the shore, and each wave was a different emotion. It was a wild ride, and I didn’t always know what to expect. But it was beautiful to behold.
