I love Julia Alvarez. I always have and I have read most of her books. Afterlife is her newest. I was lucky enough to get it immediately from Hoopla, a new app shared by the Montgomery County Library. Hoopla, however, does not play nice with the Kindle Paperwhite, so I had to read it on the iPad, which is not my favorite, but #firstworldproblems, it was free. This is the story of Antonia whose husband has just died. She is an immigrant herself, she is dealing with immigrants next door, and she is trying to help her sisters in various ways. Immigration is a key theme of this one, obviously, as is coping after the rug is pulled out from under you. It was good, but not great. I didn’t really feel hugely invested in the characters and it fell a little flat for me.