The Reaper’s Son by A.L. Brody

Dates Read: September 14, 2024 – September 16, 2024
Date Published: August 13, 2024
Source: Owned ebook

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I can already tell you that I’m going to cry while writing this review. This book made me so emotional, and I don’t even want to talk about it, but I’m going to anyway. *sharp inhale*

Alex is the son of Death. Soon it will be his time to take over for his father and assume all duties his father was once responsible for. Alex has been training with his father all his life and he knows what the job is and the sacrifices he must make. He knows them, and he’s easily accepted them. Until he meets Nia. Alex has made it his entire life without making close connections with the people he comes into contact with. Connections aren’t acceptable as the heir to Death. But he feels something for the first time when he meets Nia. Nia is a good student and a devoted daughter who takes on more responsibility than she should have as a senior in high school. Her mother has Alzheimer’s, and her father has late-stage cancer. Any day could be his last. With the help of a home health nurse, Nia does all she can to take care of her parents. It’s only when she meets Alex that she learns what it is to be truly happy and live her life, at least a little, for herself. But this love cannot last. Death is needed all over the world. Once Alex takes up his father’s mantle, he will inevitably leave. Nia is duty-bound to her parents to remain and see them both through to the end. How could they ever be?

This story absolutely wrecked me. The relationships in this book were unparalleled. The author builds Alex and his father, then Alex and Nia, and even Alex and a couple of the other friends (and enemies) he makes at school. Nia and her parents… The relationships are so in-depth that you really feel them.

This is the kind of book that makes you want the happy ending for every character in the story though you know there’s no outcome possible to make that happen. This is the kind of book where you KNOW your heart is going to be ripped from your body through your nostrils. You feel it coming, and you anticipate its arrival, yet somehow, when the time comes, you’re nowhere near ready for it.

Not only do we follow Alex and his struggle with duty vs. finally finding friends among his peers, love even, but there’s also another element to the story to further complicate things. It’s dangerous and foreboding, and it gives you this eerie sense throughout the entire story that something terrible is going to happen. You spend the entirety of the book feeling so deeply for Alex and his friends while also having this sense of dread over this other character who means to bring an end to Death himself.

I loved this book so much, and I’m so glad I picked it up. It hurts, you guys. I’m not gonna lie, but it hurts so good.