The Afterlife of Holly Chase in Dumbledore's *Reading* Army

Dec 25, 2019 Lucy Tonks (the invisible life of a reader) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-i-will-reread-until-i-die, favourites, 2019-favourites, rereads, need-to-buy-a-copy

"It's a wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profund secret and mystery to every other."

This is the perfect Christmas read and I'm sure that I'll re-read it every year around this time since I love this story so much. This is a pretty cheesy book, but in the best way possible! It is so cute!

This is a contemporary fantasy book that follows Holly Chase and one night on Christmas Eve she is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future a "It's a wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profund secret and mystery to every other."

This is the perfect Christmas read and I'm sure that I'll re-read it every year around this time since I love this story so much. This is a pretty cheesy book, but in the best way possible! It is so cute!

This is a contemporary fantasy book that follows Holly Chase and one night on Christmas Eve she is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future and if she does not change her ways and she doesn't become a better person, she will die. She didn't and she died. Five years later she is working for this company called Project Scrooge as the Ghost of Christmas Past. But this year things start to change.

I love this book! Since I re-read this book, it's pretty clear that I loved this book. The plot was very good, it took me a bit to get into the plot though (both time that I read this book), but once I got into it, I couldn't put it down! The first time I read this book, I read it in one freaking sitting. I read in five hours. This 400 page book. It took me five hours to read it. That's how entertaining this story was.

If you couldn't tell already, this book is a Christmas Carol retelling. Through out most of the book, there are a lot of references to a Christmas Carol with everything happening at Project Scrooge. I've never read A Christmas Carol or seen the movie for that matter, so I had no idea what happened in that story really before reading this book. So going into this book I had no idea what to expect.

Holly in the beggining of the book is a completle brat. But, but, that character development, damn is so good. Cynthia Hand did such a great job of bringing Holly Chase's character to life. We had a few side characters like Ethan, Steph and Boz, but since the story is about Holly, we didn't get to know them as well as we got to know our protagonist.

I've see quite a few reviews where people said that they did not like the ending of this book that much, but I freaking love it. This book is full of Christmas miracles and the ending was just that. A miracle. And it was the cheesy ending that I wanted!

This is a favourite book of mine and I'll make it a tradition of mine to re-read it every year, as I have a tradition to watch the Home Alone movies every year around Christmas time!

"But love doesn't always have to be about the happy ending, Love can be about beginnings, too." ...more

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Dec 22, 2019 Emma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult, fantasy, contemporary, ebooked, 2019-faves, christmas

Rtc

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 (4/5 stars).

YOU HAD NO RIGHT CYNTHIA HAND. YOU ABSOLUTELY HAD NO RIGHT TO DO THIS TO ME. Holy freaking cow (or should I say holly freaking cow) this book was so good and I absolutely loved it. I totally get why people are so obsessed with this novel. This sincerely has to be turned into one of the most amazing epic Christmas movies. Also the ending was soooo bittersweet😭😭 It almost made me cry.

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Dec 14, 2020 Tessa Herondale~Carstairs rated it liked it

Shelves: 3-star, contemporary

I'm thinking somewhere between a 2 and a 3, but I feel like bumping it up this time, so why not.

It was okay.

Let's start.

The concept was amazing. It really was so interesting, and I would love to read more books with this sort of concept.

I also loved how it wasn't Holly's first year as GCP, which was what I'd guessed would have happened and also what I think a lot of other authors would have written it as. She was 5 years into the role, so we didn't get to learn everything with her, which at ...more

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Dec 25, 2019 Sylvs (NOVELty Reads) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites

The first time I heard of The Afterlife Of Holly Chase was back maybe last year? And let's just say I was definitely intrigued as to why Epic Reads was a buzz about it. Literally everywhere you looked on that site was just HOLLY CHASE HOLLY CHASE HOLLY CHASE. I decided to catch the Holly Chase train... a year or two later...

It is a book inspired by the classic Dickens novel: A Christmas Carol whereby a girl named Holly Chase was visited by the three ghosts of christmas as a final attempt to cha The first time I heard of The Afterlife Of Holly Chase was back maybe last year? And let's just say I was definitely intrigued as to why Epic Reads was a buzz about it. Literally everywhere you looked on that site was just HOLLY CHASE HOLLY CHASE HOLLY CHASE. I decided to catch the Holly Chase train... a year or two later...

It is a book inspired by the classic Dickens novel: A Christmas Carol whereby a girl named Holly Chase was visited by the three ghosts of christmas as a final attempt to change her selfish ways. She didn't and then she died at age 17 and then became the new Ghost of Christmas Past at Project Scrooge. Five years later, Holly is put onto the case of Ethan Winters the third to change his selfish ways however to her surprise she finds that there could be more than meets the eye to him and ends up falling in love with him.

Let's just say Cynthia Hand is a legend! This book has the right amount of humour and let me just say the narrator's voice was GLORIOUS (yes in caps). Holly wasn't a boring main character who gets good grades and is obedient. SHE WAS GROUCHY AND I LOVED IT! She was flawed in so many ways and you could actually see it. And even Ethan! He was so multi-dimensional! He was a jerk but was soft on the inside. Kind of like a really burnt marshmallow.

And guess what! THE PLOT WASN'T EASY SOLVED! IT WAS GREAT! LIKE YESSSS A COMPLEX SITUATION THAT'S ACTUALLY HARDER TO GET OUT OF THAN JUST E.G KILLING THE BAD GUY!!

In the book. Holly had to constantly hide her relationship with Ethan and this was just fantabulous with all this undercover dating. I was absolutely here for it even though it did seem very love at first sight-y from both sides. I genuinely loved each character and did ship them a lot and guess what?! This was probably the first time EVER and I actually do mean EVER that I genuinely liked the main character a lot. It barely never happens but I just could see my own grouchy self in Holly Chase and it was like a full on euphoric moment.

But even then all of the characters just had something about them. From Dave to Boz to Blackpool and Stephanie everyone just had their own little backstory which was tapped into in completely unique ways. I found myself in love with everyone and loving finding out about Project Scrooge! I was constantly cheering on Holly as she dodged the cameras and monitors of Project Scrooge and she actually did it in a way that made sense. She actively sought out the monitoring times of Ethan rather than just "guessing" and then getting it right in a really weird warped way.

It was great and glorious and okay the ending made me low key sob but I think it did work out well and I was so happy Holly righted a few wrongs and got a second chance. I just hope that Ethan and Holly can cross paths more than once in the future.

Honestly this book just gave me hope in terms of second chances, becoming less grouchy and love. And I don't mean romantic kind of love but more so the love between family and friends which was so evident throughout the novel! I loved how it also showed people growing up, growing apart and maturing especially with the scenes featuring Ro, Holly's ex-best friend. I thought this book as a whole was just done so cleverly well!

ACTUAL RATING: 4.8 STARS ...more

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Mar 28, 2019 Ioana Maria rated it really liked it

I love Christmas! And I love chick flicks! And this was a mix of them both so obviously I liked it.
At times I was kind of bored and questioned Holly’s decisions and thought it would be super predictible.
But it surprised me, there were plot twists that I didn’t see coming and even better the ending was awesome!
I may have cried a little, I already said I’m a sucker for Christmas love stories. So yeah, I recommend this book if you wanna read something light and easy going, something fun that will t ...more

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