***ARC provided for a honest review*** 1.5 stars 
 I guess my summation of But Then I Came Back is incoherent context + the usual teenage angst like this gem: 
 "They're like knives, making julienned vegetables of my life." 
 Equals 30 year old me like this: 
 But Then I Came Back was a tough one to get through. I don't mean because I found it emotionally demanding and poignant. It was difficult because I could never get a grasp on what exactly it was trying to be. Was this supposed to be a coming of age story? Was this supposed to be a supernatural story? Or is it some combination of the two? It all just seemed like a normal contemporary story about a girl trying to reconnect to life after nearly dying. Next thing I know, Eden and her love interest, Joe, are visiting a witch named Gigi and taking about another realm of being or the afterlife. I haven't read This Raging Light of which But Then I Came Back is the somewhat sequel to. I'm not sure if having read the first book would have enriched my experience with this one. I think more likely than not that if I had read the first book I wouldn't have moved on to the next one. 
 I found myself trying to reason out the author's creative intent because I was finding it really difficult to tune in and understand exactly what was going on with But Then I Came Back. The narrative was so... chaotic. It had this whole stream of consciousness thing going on except the steam wasn't moving in a logical pattern. It was just basically facts being spouted off instead of the feelings behind them and it wasn't helping to endear me to Eden. Then something occurred to me... This girl just came out of a coma. Her brain just rebooted and this stream of consciousness is just how her brain works now. While I'm unable to figure out her emotions or opinions on her environment, she probably can't either. Her brain is a different thing now and she hasn't inhabited it long enough to really from any real relationships with her reality yet. Well... at least that's how I rationalized what I was reading. After looking at the story with this mindset for a while one thing started to become abundantly clear: I was grasping at straws to find something salvageable about this hot mess of a novel. I mean if this wasn't actually an artistic decision and just the author's writing style then this ship is sunk. 
 I tried to like this one. I really did. But at the end of the novel I just could get myself to care. Maybe it's because I'm an adult and the teenage angst is somehow not computing with my grown up brain. I don't know... this really just didn't click with me. I finished reading and I still have no idea who any of the characters are nor do I really care about what happens next for them. However, I still finished the book so I guess there's that at least...