Review
Felicia is dead. She spends her days and nights in her pod linked in to a “mainframe” that contains memories of a lot of other people that are in the same place she is. She lives in a hive filled with pods and has minimal contact with others and only has two girls she could call friends. Everyone else is concerned with reliving memories. She is at Level 2 – a place where you go when you aren’t ready to move on yet. Here you come to terms with your life and death by watching memories of your time on Earth. But, there is a pretty cool system in place. You can go in and catalog your memories, attaching tags and ratings, and making them available to the public. Then, other people can search for subjects they’d like to watch and rent your memories for credits. You, as the memory owner receive payment for each rented memory. Felicia is lucky. Her mother is a Foreign Service Officer, which allowed her to travel a lot so her memories are sought after. But, besides “reading books” or “watching movies” through other people’s memories, Felicia mainly likes to watch her own – the ones that involve her boyfriend Neil. Time doesn’t have meaning in the hive and things are always the same - until one of her friends disappears after some glitches in the pods. When Julian, a boy Felicia knew when she was alive, appears in her pod and tells her she has to leave, she knows something isn’t right about the hives. Determined to find out what is going on and to locate Neil, Felicia runs with Julian and enters the world of a rebellion between angels and heaven. Appelhans is so creative in how weaves this story around Felicia. The Memory of After definitely stands out among the other books dealing with the afterlife. I’m excited to see where the author takes the characters next.
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