What Comes After

In this darkly comical, heartfelt novel, a cynical sixteen-year-old girl has only ninety days to remember how she died and finally make peace with her mother to escape spending eternity adrift in a vast nothingness. For fans of Adam Silvera and The Good Place.

No one could be more disappointed about Mari's sudden death than Mari, herself. And if she ever thought about the afterlife, she certainly didn't think it would be a suburban enclave called Paradise Gate or that the biggest problem to plague her in life would follow her into the great beyond: her recently deceased mother, Faye. But that is exactly who greets her when Mari opens her eyes in the In Between--where the newly dead with no religious affiliation come to work out the unfinished business of their lives so they can ascend to whatever's next.

Mari realizes quickly Faye is her unfinished business and in order to ascend and join her loving grandparents, she'll have to make peace with and forgive her dysfunctional mother for being no mother at all But there's too much to forgive: never holding down a steady job, never having a stable home, Mari having to constantly change schools and in the end, Faye choosing her criminal boyfriend over Mari.

It's a lot to sort through, but Mari tries to keep her eye on the ball--attending classes at the Center like Youga and sending grief scarves sailing in Expressive Arts to move her vibe tracker from an angry unsettled red to an ascend-worthy green--all the while trying to remember how she died and deal with Faye, who, of course, is in danger of being kicked out of Paradise Gate altogether. But then Mari discovers in addition to mother drama, there's even friend drama and boy drama to be found in the afterlife and none are good for her vibes. Even worse is the suspicion that Paradise Gate isn't at all what it purports to be...and revolution may be afoot.

Author: Katie Bayerl
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Published: 04/29/2025
Pages: 416
Binding Type: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780399545283
Audience: Young Adult

About the Author
When Katie Bayerl isn't penning stories, she coaches teens and nonprofits to tell theirs. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has taught creative writing in schools and a variety of community settings. Katie has an incurable obsession with saints, bittersweet ballads, and murder. She is the author of A Psalm for Lost Girls and What Comes After.