Originally posted at Riffs And Reviews

I have waited anxiously for Arise since I read Hereafter late last year. I am thrilled to say Tara Hudson has written an exciting sequel that takes the series in a direction I didn’t anticipate. The scene described in the summary above is such a small part of the book, yet it will have huge repercussions for Amelia and Joshua moving forward.

In Arise, Amelia and Joshua are officially a couple – even if no one can see Amelia except Joshua, his sister Jillian and their grandmother Ruth. As their relationship has grown closer, however, Joshua’s friendships have fallen by the wayside which has Amelia worried. She is beginning to realize how impossible a relationship between a human and a ghost will be, as he grows older and she remains the same. Hudson is quick to bring Amelia’s concerns to the forefront, which I appreciated because I had been asking some of these questions myself. How do you maintain a relationship when one partner is aging and the other isn’t? What if you could never introduce the one you love to your family and friends because they can’t see him/her? I really couldn’t see how Amelia and Joshua could remain a couple in the long-term, and Amelia is beginning to think along the same lines. Her solution? She must break up with Joshua and let him get back to a regular life – one without a ghostly girlfriend. Before she does, however, she decides to accompany him on a road trip with his family to New Orleans so she has some memories to take with her. It is a trip that will change their relationship forever.

While a “final road trip” is a bit of a cliché, I liked the way it opened up the world to these characters. It was an opportunity to see them out of their environment and interacting with others. There turned out to be a lot of “others” for them to meet. Several of Joshua’s cousins are added to mix, along with their friend Alex, a new group of “unclaimed souls” who would like Amelia to join them, and a teenage voodoo practitioner named Gaby who might have the answer to Amelia’s predicament. With all the new characters and experiences, this book just flew by. The cousins individually were not particularly memorable, but the fact that they could sense and communicate with Amelia was. Their friend Alex, though, was pivotal since he is the one who has taught the cousins how to open their senses to ghosts like Amelia. As Alex began to interact with Amelia I thought he might become a romantic rival for her affections, but he turned out to have a very different purpose in Hudson’s grand scheme. Gaby was introduced about halfway through the book, and became my favorite new character. I wasn’t sure of her at first, but she turned out to be a gutsy, bold counterpoint to Amelia’s more quiet character. They struck a nice balance together.

Since the majority of Arise takes place in New Orleans, the colorful character of the town is on display. Restless spirits and voodoo add flavor to the story, while bringing back some of the edge that was lost when Eli was defeated in the first book. Eli, by the way, does make a brief appearance at the beginning of this story, just enough to give Amelia a warning and for us to see he is not doing well in the netherworld. I kind of sympathized with him a little in Hereafter so I’m hoping with the way things end in Arise that the next book thrusts Amelia into the netherworld and gives her an opportunity for a rescue mission. I was not expecting the voodoo angle, but with its ties to New Orleans it fit nicely into the story and provided an interesting solution to Amelia’s ghostly status – although the solution is not without its own problems to be explored in the next book. The story twists and turns its way into a climax that pits Amelia directly against the netherworld demons who seek to claim her soul.

Arise by Tara Hudson takes us to the next level in the romance of ghost Amelia and her human boyfriend Joshua. With its mix of love, danger, voodoo and fascinating new characters – all set against the backdrop of New Orleans – Arise is an exciting and fast-paced sequel to Hereafter that will leave you wanting to know where Hudson is going to take us next.