Under the Whispering Door
By TJ Klune
- Genre
- Fantasy & Magical Realism
- Publisher
- Tor Books (Macmillan)
- Publication year
- 2021
- ISBN
- 9781250217349
Wallace, a cold, workaholic lawyer, dies and finds himself at a remote tea shop that serves as a way station for the dead, run by a ferryman named Hugo. Given a week before he must cross over, Wallace slowly learns how to live, and to love, too late. TJ Klune's contemporary fantasy was a New...
Wallace Price is a miserable, ruthless lawyer, and he is also, as of page one, dead - a fact he grasps only when a reaper escorts him to a peculiar rural tea shop that turns out to be a waystation between life and whatever comes next. There, given a few days before he must step through the titular door, Wallace is gently, stubbornly taught how to be human by the shop's kind ferryman, Hugo, and its lovable staff of the living and the lingering. TJ Klune, following his hit The House in the Cerulean Sea, writes another warm, openhearted fable, this time about grief, regret and second chances, laced with humor and a tender queer romance that blooms across the boundary of death. Sentimental by design, it makes no apology for wanting to comfort; readers seeking edge should look elsewhere, but those who want a hug of a book will be moved. For fans of cozy, life-affirming fantasy about learning to live, it is a bestselling balm.