What a devastating but beautiful book. Despite the reference to 'after', the novel switches between the aftermath and weeks/months before the death by suicide of Alice Weil, a privileged and seemingly successful high school student from NYC. The effects of her death resonate through the lives of her family and friends years later, brought to the fore as they gather for her brother's wedding. It did feel very much an upper-middle class New York story - the voice and style was self-consciously pretentious throughout, and the concerns of some of the characters were not particularly relatable. This, along with the self-centred self-pitying thoughts and actions of pretty much ALL the main characters, meant I didn't really like any of them!

Despite this, I found the events and characters compelling and really admired the writing, which did a great job of dealing with difficult themes while creating complex and quite dislikable characters. Though I wasn't necessarily rooting for all the characters I was also pleased that there were moments of hope, growth and even redemption.

I had high hopes for this given some of the comparisons made (particularly to Maggie Shipstead's Seating Arrangements, also set at a New England wedding with a long history between the families) but, although enjoyable enough to read, I didn't find it up to that standard. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

The World After Alice is a debut novel for this author but it wasn’t my type of read unfortunately.
It is twelve years since Alice died at the age of sixteen and her best friend, Morgan and her brother, Benji have been in a secret relationship for a couple of years with neither set of parents knowing and now they are getting married. The parents relationships are messy with Benji’s parents having divorced after Alice’s death and it also coming to light that his father had been having an affair with Caro whom he is now married to. Morgan’s parents aren’t married and her father is her mothers best friend as he’s never had the guts to tell her he loves her and she has arrived at the wedding with another man with her who happens to be Alice’s philosophy teacher where at the time lines were crossed between teacher and student.
This books main problem for me was how slow it moved, it took great effort to pick my kindle up and begin, I think had the chapters been shorter this would have helped me. There were also words that I’d not heard of before and had to look up which upset my reading rhythm. I felt the flashbacks didn’t really add anything to the storyline and made the book slower. It was a decent storyline it just needed to get there quicker and more emotion writing in as I didn’t feel it enough. I also would have liked to have known why Alice did what she did but maybe that’s an authors ploy to make me think about it more.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House for this ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

Set in Maine ,two Families come together after a tragedy 12 years ago. Such a sad story telling how Alice's death affected everyone and continues to do so .A Family Saga of love and loss quite a hard read and a bit of a slow burner .Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this novel and I am not sure now that I have read it, how I would categorise it , however, I enjoyed reading this book. Its a well written story about two families who are surprised to receive a wedding invitation. Benji and Morgan are getting married, their relationship comes as a shock to their families, 12 years earlier Benji's sister Alice died, Morgan was Alice's best friend. This wedding is the first time the families will be together since the funeral of Alice and long hidden secrets are about to come to the surface.

This was an enjoyable read, I didn't feel a deep connection to the characters ( there were a lot) but the plot was engaging, it is well written and I loved the setting. A well observed story and I would absolutely read more from this author.

3.5- 4 stars.

Twelve years have passed since the death of Alice Weil when she was just sixteen. Her younger brother, Benji, hopes his wedding to Alice's childhood best friend, Morgan, will bring his sparring family back together as they celebrate. However, over the course of the weekend, family secrets and rekindled emotions come bubbling to the surface and it's clear that no-one is ready to move on...

The novel goes between the present day, the weekend of Benji and Morgan's whirlwind wedding in Maine, and just over twelve years prior to provide context for the events that unfold. Linnie and Nick are Benji's parents who are thrown back together after separating not long after Alice's funeral when it became apparent that Nick had been having an affair with Caro (who is now his wife). Peter is Linnie's friend and father of Morgan, and he has loved Linnie for years but been too shy to let her know. Linnie's new partner, Ezra, was Alice's philosophy teacher at school - but had a relationship with her that blurred the appropriate student-teacher boundaries...

I usually enjoy a family drama with secrets and getting under the skin of the characters (Tessa Hadley and Ann Patchett spring to mind), however this one just didn't quite hit the mark for me. There were slightly too many characters and I didn't feel that I got to know any of them particularly deeply and it took a while for them to 'stick' in my mind to follow the story. None of the characters were especially likeable either so I didn't really care enough about them to wonder whether the secrets being exposed would prove ruinous or clear the air. Characters don't <have> to be likeable, of course, but it didn't quite work here because everything they were struggling with ended up feeling a bit "rich, white people problems."

It was a disappointment that we never get Alice's voice in the narrative so I'm still not quite sure why it was that she decided to jump from the George Washington Bridge - or perhaps that was what the author intended so that we are in the same position as her parents and friends? (Shades of The Virgin Suicides here.)

The pacing of the story was slow in parts (mostly the flashbacks that I felt didn't add anything to our understanding of modern-day events) and I could have done without the sentimental/twee epilogue.

The use throughout of vocabulary that I had to look up the meanings to was also jarring as it took me out of the story (and kind of made me feel the author was trying to hard to impress their 'literariness').

Overall, a fine debut with plenty of promise for future writing - just didn't pack enough of an emotional punch for me.

Green has written an emotional and extremely well observed story about the aftermath’s of a teenager taking their own life. Set largely over one weekend in Maine, at the wedding of Alive’s little brother, to her best friend, the ongoing impact of their shared grief and different responses is highlighted in a way that is often sad and stressful but also amusing and quirky.
I liked it and would recommend to those who like a character based study, with the history revealed through flasbacks l from different points of view. I think it works well here and it kept me engaged .
A good four stars.

The premise of the book sounded good: a young girl jumps from a bridge to her death 12 years previously and today her now divorced parents are attending the wedding of her younger brother and best friend, along with other people who were around 12 years before. The story jumps from the present to Alice’s funeral to the time before her suicide. Unfortunately I felt the characters were 2d and never really came to life. None of them engaged me so I wasn’t really invested in the narrative and found myself checking how much further until the end.

Thank you to netgalley and publishers for an advanced copy of this book for my honest opinion. I'm not sure what genre I would place this into, topics include love, friendships and family dynamics but also loss, grief and suicide. A well written book that I'm glad I had the opportunity to read. 3,5*

I really enjoyed this book!! The writing style was my ideal set up- I felt connected and engaged in the story within the first few pages which is always a great strength. I thought the way it moved between different characters made the story so well paced and engaging whilst giving us a fuller view of both the past and present situation.

I thought the exploration of grief was done so well and I enjoyed how all of the characters being at such different stages of life allowed the author to angle this from all of the different perspectives- it made for a really thought provoking concept.

Overall I really enjoyed this book, I think my only wish was that there was more of it- I think with the number of characters and the depth of issues explored it could have been longer and still have moved at pace (although I am in the minority being a long book lover). I think the way this book explores so many dark topics without feeling completely dark is a real skill and I will definitely be interested to read any of her future works.

This storyline offers a thought-provoking concept that delves into the various ways individuals navigate their healing journey following the loss of Alice twelve years ago.

This emotional family drama turned out to be more character-driven than I anticipated. The debut author's impressive and easily digestible writing style was a pleasant surprise. However, there were some parts that felt somewhat predictable and slow-paced, preventing it from being a five-star read for me. Nonetheless, the sweet ending left a positive impression, and I'm grateful to have experienced this story.
I eagerly anticipate the author's future releases and recommend this to fans of the genre.

This is an intriguing and very well written novel. The author has an excellent turn of phrase. Gradually, the secrets of the past are revealed following the suicide of Alice, as the families gather for Benji and Morgan’s wedding. The book occasionally goes back in time to the period of Alice’s suicide. This book should provide plenty of scope for discussion at book clubs. As well as dealing with the loss of a child, it covers other areas including the hot housing of a child, and possible boundary breaches between teacher and student.

3.5 stars. This was a raw story about a group of people bound together by both love and loss, wrapped in a web of secrets - some old, some new. There are a lot of characters to get acquainted with and it took me a while to get everyone straightened out in my mind.
The ways in which the characters feelings and reactions to the tragedy felt very realistic, it showed that everyone grieves in different ways and that experiencing something as awful as this will ripple out into decisions you make for years afterwards. It is testament to the writing that there is no sense of a trope ever, everything feels genuine.
The juxtaposition of the joyous occasion of a wedding with the sadness and anger of the attendees is a really interesting idea for a book but I feel that it leaned too much on the latter and the wedding was lost to the background mostly.
There was something remote in the writing that could well have been deliberate, I had a sense that I was watching a slightly opaque rendering that stopped me from getting too close, kept me at arms length most of the time. This could have been to give a sense of people always feeling they need to temper themselves in society, but it didn't fully work for me.

A story about grief and family. Though well written, the narrative did not engage me. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher to the arc.

This abounds with family dynamics Alice committed suicide 12 years ago and now her best friend and her brother are getting married and the families are shocked. The story unravels as everyone faces their grief

The World After Alice
By Lauren Aliza Green

A story about the ripples that grief sends out following the death of a loved one. Alice was 16 when she went missing off the George Washington Bridge. Since then, her parents have divorced and her brother is now marrying her best friend.

With it's themes of unrequited loss, marital infidelity and questionable teacher/ student relationships, and it's Upper West Side and Maine settings, this could have been a hit out of the park for me, but it didn't quite make the impression I expected. I enjoyed the reading experience, but I never really felt like Green revealed any of the characters. Each felt like an unreliable narrator, and while it's always interesting to compare perspectives, I felt as though I was being kept at arms length throughout, and that never resolved into anything that felt like a narrative arc.

Having recently read, and loved, a similarly themed book, "After Annie", by Anna Quindlen, I couldn't help but compare and contrast both novels, and unfortunately for Alice, recency bias was probably at play.

I will say that the story is highly readable, with lovely prose, and so much potential, but it lacked something in the denouement.

Publication date: 1st August 2024
Thanks to #netgalley and #penguinrandomhouse for the ARC

I was drawn in by the premise of this book, Morgan and Benji are getting married years after the death of Alice, his sister and her best friend - this is the first time their families will reunite since Alice’s funeral.

Sadly, I just couldn’t get past the writing of this book, it just didn’t flow well and came across quite pretentious which meant I never really got in to the story.

This was a really poignant story about love, grief and family, and how a wedding may (or can?) unite it all. Shared secrets and old dramas merge into the culminant moment where the bride and groom hope it will all be reconciled.

I found this book difficult to read as the story did not flow fluently for me. It’s a story full of family secrets and deals with how families grieve in different ways. I’m sure some people will absolutely love it and that’s what reading is all about.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review.

The premise of this book sounded really interesting, but unfortunately I found the writing really dry and old fashioned in some of its sentence construction and vocabulary, so a bit of a chore to read. I also struggled with the time line changes, and I'm sorry to say I didn't finish the book. Hopefully, as I believe this is a debut novel, the author's style will become more contemporary in future books.
Thank you to netgalley and Michael Joseph for an advance copy of this book