Wallace Price doesn’t care if no one likes him; he’s efficient at his job and that’s all that matters. Social life, friends, family, loved ones? None of that is important. Until the day he drops dead, and his time to find any of those things runs out. Now that Hugo, a caring tea shop owner is offering to help Wallace find peace before passing over, Wallace might actually start to realize how much he has been missing. Even if the Manager, Hugo’s boss, has given Wallace only a week to do so. Because isn’t it funny that you don’t really don’t notice how much your life is missing until it’s your life that’s missing?
Me after reading this book:
It’s a gut punch but in all the best ways. Wallace starts out as one of the most unlikable people you can read about, and by the end you’re really rooting for him to get all he wants. Character growth in spades for this lad; who knew lawyers could do that? (It’s okay, I’m the daughter of a lawyer, I have dispensation to make lawyer jokes.) Hugo and his grandfather, Nelson, are brilliantly written, even if his grandfather checks all the boxes for “irrascible, adorable, and a hoot of an old man”. Mei, the reaper who collects Wallace from his own funeral comes across like a cross between Neil Gaiman’s Death and maybe Courtney Crumrin if they were both Asian in the best way possible. And Apollo is of course the bestest, most beautiful dog and deserves all the pets. The Manager, however got a little old at times; he came across like an AU for Lucy from The House in the Cerulean Sea, and luckily Klune went in a better direction with Lucy.
One thing I will say, is that out of the 3 books of his I’ve read (this, The House in the Cerulean Sea, and Somewhere Beyond the Sea) TJ Klune does seem to have a type of main couple he leans towards; chubby White man who starts out hyper-focused on his job and doesn’t know how to really live, and the taller, thinner POC man patiently teaches him what life is really about. Not a criticism, just something I noticed.
Read this if you like death, feel-good in the end stories, and people sitting around drinking copious amounts of tea.
