The After Wife: A Novel

by Gigi Levangie Grazer

Gigi Levangie Grazer, the New York Times bestselling author of The Starter Wife, returns with a hilarious and spirited tale of love—both lost and found.

L.A. is no place for widows. This is what forty-four-year-old Hannah Bernal quickly discovers after the tragic death of her handsome and loving husband, John. Misery and red-rimmed eyes are little tolerated in the land of the beautiful. But life stumbles on: Hannah’s sweet three-year-old daughter, Ellie, needs to be dropped off at her overpriced preschool, while Hannah herself must get back to work in order to pay the bills on “Casa Sugar,” the charming Spanish-styled bungalow they call home.

Fortunately, Hannah has her “Grief Team” for emotional support: earth mother and fanatical animal lover Chloe, who finds a potential blog post in every moment; aspiring actress Aimee, who has her cosmetic surgeon on speed dial; and Jay, Hannah’s TV producing partner, who has a penchant for Mr. Wrong. But after a series of mishaps and bizarre occurrences, one of which finds Hannah in a posh Santa Monica jail cell, her friends start to fear for her sanity. To make matters worse, John left their financial affairs in a disastrous state. And when Hannah is dramatically fired from her latest producing gig, she finds herself in danger of losing her house, her daughter, and her mind.

One night, standing in her backyard under a majestic avocado tree, in the throes of grief, Hannah breaks down and asks, “Why?” The answer that comes back—Why not?—begins an astounding journey of discovery and transformation that leads Hannah to her own truly extraordinary life after death.

Praise for The After Wife

“Fans of Lolly Winston, Mary Kay Andrews, and Jennifer Weiner will especially enjoy Grazer’s newest.”—Booklist

“Hilariously funny and profoundly wise, The After Wife is for anyone who’s ever been married or widowed, in debt or in love. I could not put it down: a fabulous read!”—Nancy Thayer, author of Island Girls

“A charming tale of a grieving forty-ish widow—and the wacky friends who love her.”—Los Angeles Times

“A book that is part Jacqueline Susann, part Real Housewives . . . Gigi Levangie Grazer [is a] Jimmy Choo’ed-out satirist.”—National Post

“Fans of The Starter Wife will be equally charmed with The After Wife.”—Library Journal

“Grazer’s entertaining satire is sure to spice up any occasion.”—Publishers Weekly

• ISBN10: 0345524004
• ISBN13: 9780345524003
• Publish Date: 27 August 2013 (first published 10 July 2012)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Ballantine Books Inc.
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780345524003

Reviews

[Leah]

Gigi Levangie Grazer is an author with quite a few novels to her name, as well as a successful TV show and movie (I think), but I’ve never tried any of her novels. I did attempt to read Fairytale Ending (also published as Queen Takes King) but it did not appeal to me in the slightest. I couldn’t get into it at all and didn’t make it past the first chapte.r When I saw her new novel, The After Wife, on NetGalley, and read the synopsis, I was intrigued. I love novels that deal with the afterlife in one way or another, Cally Taylor’s Heaven Can Wait and Sophie Kinsella’s Twenties Girl being prime examples and The After Wife sounded brilliant, so I downloaded it to my Kindle and happily started reading.

The After Wife tells the tale of Hannah Bernal, who is living the dream. She has a beautiful house – Casa Sugar, the best friends a girl could ask for, a dream job, and a perfect husband and daughter. Until one day it all goes epically wrong, and her husband is killed. After that, Hannah’s life falls apart. She struggles to make her mortgage payments, struggles to look after her daughter, and generally just struggles with day-to-day life now that John is no longer with her, no longer there to help her whenever she needs it. Just to make Hannah’s life even worse, she suddenly finds she can talk to dead people. Not in a Sixth-Sense, creepy sort of way, but in a dead-people-talk-sense-even-though-it’s-strange kind of way. It IS creepy, I suppose, but it works.

I thought The After Wife was a brilliant read. I really did. I love that this year books I would never normally read are turning out to be some of my favourites, that they surprise me in all the right ways. I loved Hannah’s story. I love how Gigi Levangie Grazer showed us how life was for Hannah before John died, how it showed us in those first few chapters how much they loved each other, making it all the more worse when he dies. Hannah’s grief was so real, so there, and to follow her on her journey was, I’d like to say privileged but that sounds silly, it was sad, yes, but it was a worthwhile journey. It was the sort of journey that satisfies you when you finish, that although, sure, she lost her husband, she didn’t let that be the death of her, so to speak. The whole spiritual/ghost thing was so, so, so well done. It’s such a rare thing in Chick Lit (authors are afraid to put anything out there in their novels these days) but it was done excellently. I fell in love with the people Hannah talked to, I liked how she could still speak to John, could speak to Trish, who previously owned Casa Sugar.

It was such a touching, warm, moving novel. I loved that Hannah had her own “grief team”, consisting of her three best friends, Jay, Aimee and Chloe. I liked how all four of them were so separate and different. The writing was spot-on, it was so good that I could barely put the book down, I was always saying just one more chapter and I stayed up past midnight to finish the novel. That’s a novel well done as far as I was concerned. And it was well done. The only criticism I have is there’s a bit of a distasteful remark/joke in there. Hannah and Jay are out exercising on some steps and Hannah stops and Jay says that if they didn’t get moving, they’d be trampled and Jay says “It’s like being at a Liverpool soccer match” or similar. I took that as a reference to the fans being killed at Hillsborough years ago, and it was distasteful, as a football fan and as a person. I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but anyone who knows Liverpool and read that line would probably find it wrong and I’d have personally taken that out, changed it to something lighter, something in which people didn’t die. Apart from that, I loved it. Absoloutely, utterly loved it. If you’re not a fan of ghosts then this isn’t the book for you, but if you loved Twenties Girl or Heaven Can Wait (as I did) you will adore The After Wife, it was a triumph.