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 I really had no idea what to expect from Hereafter, considering that I loved Shadowlands so much. Shadowlands ended on one of the most painful and most surprising cliffhangers that I've ever read. Sadly, Hereafter never fully commits to the unexpected turn of events that occurred at the end of Shadowlands. Hereafter relies way too heavily on Shadowlands' cliffhanger to move the plot ahead which led to an extremely slow-paced plot. 
 Hereafter continues just where Shadowlands left off and the plot is simple, but entertaining. Kate Brian introduces a bunch of paranormal concepts, but they felt like takeoffs of Greek mythology. It seemed like Brian just stuck on a new name and rebranded these Greek concepts as her own. Calling a creature a "lifer" doesn't really excuse the fact that she is borrowing the entire concept of Charon (the ferryman in the Underworld). I would have been fine with this borrowing if Brian had expanded these ideas, but Brian seemed to take the easy route with the lifers. 
 I had a lot of fun reading Shadowlands, but Hereafter wasn't nearly as entertaining. Hereafter has a bit of a darker tone than Shadowlands and something seemed to be missing from Hereafter. The romance is nothing special at all and is extremely formulaic. I read Hereafter in less than a day, but I felt like I had to force myself to continue reading it. It lacked the addictive, page-turner quality that Shadowlands seemed to possess. I also really felt like barely anything occurred in this entire novel; I could probably summarize this whole book in two sentences and cover almost the book's entire plotline. 
 I didn't mind Rory in book #1, but she definitely annoyed me while reading Hereafter. It seemed that she was so oblivious to the looming danger that was quite obvious. She also seemed a bit selfish in my opinion because she didn't want her father and sister to move on without her. Rory easily could have averted all of the danger if she wasn't so concerned with Tristan and falling in love with him. Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh because I'm annoyed with her lack of action! Instead of complaining how everything was going wrong, she could have tried to do something more than whine. 
 Hereafter suffers from "Middle-Book syndrome" for sure and it lacks almost everything I loved about Shadowlands. Shadowlands was an intense thriller, but Hereafter feels like a simple lackluster paranormal romance. Hereafter is nothing like what I expect and I'm beginning to think that maybe my expectations were too high. I am extremely disappointed by Hereafter and I can only hope that book 3 redeems this series.