Daisy Cooper's Rules for Living by Tamsin Keily, 325 pages
Daisy Cooper is a young woman just starting out adult life on her own. She's just out of college and is living in London with her best friend, working an underpaying job and saving for a dream trip to New York City, and looking forward to a long life ahead of her. One winter evening, she heads out for a quick trip to the store to grab some milk, trips on the icy sidewalk, and dies. In a lot of books, that's where Daisy's involvement in the plot would end, but not in this one. After her death, Daisy meets Death, who informs her of the mixup that led to her entrance to afterlife administration (not the actual afterlife, mind you) and hires her as his assistant. Over the next several months, Daisy helps shepherd other souls to the actual afterlife and pines for the friends and family she left behind.
This is a somewhat odd premise for a book, and in my opinion, it could've been handled a bit more gracefully. Daisy, her family, and her friends all deal with the grief of her passing in various ways, some more healthily than others, and the chapters are all led by a brief philosophical interlude from Death (who is not as scary as you might imagine). It has some good messages, but it's a bit heavy-handed in its treatment of them. It's OK, but not great.
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