This Morning I Woke Up Dead by Mindy Larson, A Book Review

This story is the epitome of what if.  I found myself asking that question throughout the book as I tried to picture what happened, and how it would end.

There are two main characters in this story, and they each talk in the first person as it goes from one to the other.  It keeps you from wondering what the person is thinking and feeling and instead wondering what they will do or understand next.

I can't, and maybe you won't either, help but feel their distraught emotions and love for each other.  You want them to reconnect, and you don't really care how they do it.  Dead, alive, it makes no matter as long as they get back together.  Crazy right?  Of course if they were people I actually knew, I might not be so cavalier with their lives.  But then again, maybe I would.  That is if I felt the same emotions with them as the author made me feel with these characters.

The concept the author explored, death, is one we all think about, and probably a lot more than we want to.  It is a fact of life, but what we know of it is completely limited and inadequate to make us feel comfortable and safe to transition to that state even though we know it is our final journey.  The unknown is a haunting thing to say the very least.  So we wonder, and the what if questions saturate our thoughts.  What if it is nicer than here?  What if we would be happier?  What if our knowledge and concepts are not even close?  See what I mean?

The characters did the same thing.  One tried to figure out what was happening, and the other tried to find peace with what was.  Or rather what was believed to be reality.  But then as things happened, questioning the unknown was the only solace they had.  The only peaceful and soothing solution to bathe their minds was questioning what was real and what could be real if only they could grasp the supposed impossible with both hands and hang on.  For some reason, maybe it was how we were taught in school about science; we always seem to need physical validation to believe.  Of course it's okay in religion to have faith, but somehow everything else is off limits.  Funny right?  How shallow and mind limiting we can be.

Overall the story was entertaining, and emotionally charged.  You felt what the characters felt, and sought to find an acceptable conclusion without keeping the two apart.  As they rode the waves of the moving tide with each other, you wanted one of them to grab hold of the other, and not let go.  Either way, they needed to be together.  Read the book, and I think you will agree, one moving on without the other just wasn't acceptable.