Synopsis
After divorce, death, and having his reformatted soul uploaded into a new body, Sasha expected resurrection to be a fresh start. His time spent in digital Limbo with the program’s cheeky AI guardian angel, Metatron, was cathartic, but what good is a second life when he only sees his daughter on the weekends, he has all the same problems he had before he died, and he can’t seem to shake the ache for the married life he lost?
If that weren’t frustrating enough, a glitch in the program has given Sasha the ability to sense Metatron even outside of Limbo. And Metatron is in love. The angel’s sickly-sweet yearning for one of the souls still in Limbo has turned Sasha’s stomach into caramelized lead. It’s hard enough to move on without someone else’s feelings making the emptiness in his own life even more acute. He didn’t have playing wingman to an actual winged being on his bingo card, but he’s determined to help Metatron make a move on their crush so he can get love off of his mind.
Sasha takes a job with the resurrection company in order to covertly contact Metatron. Except Sasha’s new coworker, Mr. C, keeps showing up at the worst moments. The man is annoying, he’s pushy… and he’s incredibly hot. Sasha can’t decide whether Mr. C wants to blackmail him or be his new BFF, but he seems to know things about Metatron and the resurrection program that Sasha doesn’t. Getting close to him might be the key to solving Sasha’s problem, but if he isn’t careful, he’s going to end up catching feelings of his own.
Review
Al Hess’s covers always stand out to me in some way or another and this one drew me towards it the quickest combined with its description. I love stories that incorporate AI characters (usually shipminds) so I was eager to give this one a try since the setting and plot sounded quite different from those books with AI that I usually read.
And I was not disappointed. Though it had a bit of a slow start for me and one of the MC’s methods were quite questionable to me, I did eventually grow to really like him and the other main characters. There were two romance plots in these and one felt better developed (on page) than the other but I was a fan of both overall and happy to cheer them all on. Finding out how the characters were connected to each other and why their quirks and personalities were as they were was interesting and I enjoyed the drama at the end quite a bit as well.
The mental health aspect was really relatable to me also and I liked how that was woven into the story along the way. It didn’t feel like an afterthought addition and was an important piece of the story.
This was a quirky and fun story with cool world building and characters that were easy to cheer for once you got to know them. The writing felt smooth and made for a quick read as well. I’m excited to check out more of his books and am pretty sure I already own at least one or two of them.
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