Yasmin Stoker is a ghost tour guide who spends her days showing tourists around Shoregrave’s haunted hotspots. She also happens to be a wraith who spends her nights hunting Revenants, newly-risen flesh-eating vampires. On one of her regular hunts, she witnesses a mysterious ghostly girl pulling the body of a teenage boy underground. Who and what is this girl, and why is she attacking men around the city? Yasmin investigates, but it quickly becomes clear that somebody wants to keep her from finding the killer and they’ll do anything–including ambushing her with ghouls and cacodaemons–to stop her.
With only a persistent private eye and a taciturn vampire (one of the Immaculate, no less) to help her, Yasmin must deal with fanatical necromancers, crazed ghosts, and a sexy history teacher in her quest to solve the mystery. And along the way she uncovers some heartbreaking truths about her own existence.

Afterlife by Naomi Clark
Available Now
Urban Fantasy
ebook, 287 pages
Damnation Books

Yasmin Stoker is a six hundred year old wraith, a creature, who can turn into mist, who is poised between life and death. She feeds on the souls of revenants, those vampires who are evil and cursed. She chooses not to destroy mortal human souls, and lives a more peaceful life. She is a tour guide in Shoregrave, taking tourists to the most haunted places. The dwellings they visit are in fact haunted by ghosts, but the tourists may see a shadow or hear a funny noise and nothing more.

While out hunting her latest revenant soul, she witnesses a horrific scene, one in her six hundred years of existence she has never seen. A young girl, lures a teenager over to her by pretending to be lost. Once she has a overtly strong grip on him, she literally drags him underground, along with herself. Yasmin is stumped and terrified. Hidden underground is the Pale World, where evil creatures lived. Yasmin felt no portal open, so she is confused as to exactly the girl and her victim went.

One person who might have answers is the Lich Lord, Nicomedes. A viscous, cruel man, one that Yasmin must tread lightly around. He won’t give immediate answers but he does have a task for Yasmin – Ethan, a private investigator coming into town to investigate deaths of several missing teenage girls and a girl that went missing from Shoregrave a few weeks ago. Nicomedes is afraid the Ethan is getting too close to the afterlife beings, and wants Yasmin to take care of him.

Yasmin is not happy to take his life, but she is more frightened of Nicomedes to go against his wishes. Yet, everything changes after she meets with Ethan and finds out exactly what girl he is looking for. Yasmin needs him to help solve the mystery, and as more kids go missing, the race to solve

I first read Naomi Clark in the Queer Wolf anthology. Her short story, Wolf Strap, is one of my favorites in the collection and I was excited to try something else by her. Unfortunately, Afterlife fell flat for me. I never felt a real connection to any of the characters, more they were just walking through the motions. Yasmin is a likable heroine, but missing any wit or spunk. After Ethan is introduced, some banter starts and his character grabbed me a little more. The mystery moved at a slow pace and I could not get caught up in it. There is a romance, which is written nicely and sweet , however, overall I could not find anything that really grabbed my attention.

Naomi Clark’s Wolf Strap story impressed me enough to try her again, and hopefully with a better outcome.

Rating: 2.5/5

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