767 reviews for:

Aftertaste

Daria Lavelle

4.14 AVERAGE

emotional funny tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

This has to be one of the most unique stories I've read in a long time. Ghosts. Restaurants. Connecting to the dead. Mental health. I loved it. Jordy's Book Club said it was like The Bear meets Ghosthunters and that was pretty accurate! Especially loved her commitment to discussing mental health and including the numbers for help for people who need it.

The characters..the plot.. keep your tissues because I was tearing up in jury duty!! LOL. This is the author's debut novel and I can't wait to read whatever she writes next. Definitely check this book out!!


Very conflicted. On one hand, I didn't care for the romance stuff, but on the other, the writing slammed me flat on my ass. WOW. The clunky plot gave birth to some amazingly tasty prose. The tender balance and mixture of love and food was mesmerizing- the love of food and the food of love. Plot aside, it was exquisite. But then the ghost stuff got complicated... unnecessarily. And I had to tough through the romance plot to get to the delicious writing in the center. 
dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous dark emotional mysterious fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
emotional mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
emotional hopeful mysterious sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
emotional medium-paced
adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative inspiring mysterious reflective relaxing sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This delivered on its premise and was mostly enjoyable. I still have some worldbuilding questions remaining, hence the rating, but I think this was a very interesting combination of themes. We've got meditations on grief and what it means to move on, some complicated romance, immigrant family troubles, and then the culinary inventions. I don't even know what the correct genre for this book would be, but it was a compelling read. 
dark emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I had no idea what I was getting into with this book because it’s pretty new with not many reviews, and it’s also the author’s debut novel as far as I know. 

it ended up being FANTASTIC!!! such a unique story with a great underlying message. it’s a blend of lots of different genres so there’s something in there for everyone. at its core, its a story about how everyone tackles grief (although it’s surprisingly light/uplifting for being about grief and death) but it’s also a love letter to food, which I really enjoyed. 

the first half kind of reminded me of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by gabrielle zevin. fans of that book would like the writing style and general message of this one. 

I also loved the structure of this book! the chapters were so perfectly woven together and it was very unique. 
emotional reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix