Under the Whispering Door // A book pairing

“The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through.”

A couple of years ago I listened to The House in the Cerulean Sea on a whim and fell in love with TJ Klune’s writing. The humor! The depth! The ridiculous yet earnest characters! The whimsical settings!

Under the Whispering Door imagines what happens when we die. What happens after our souls leave our bodies but before they go…wherever it is they go? We follow Wallace Price, a seemingly awful man, as he finds out just that in the wake of his untimely death. His life is over, but is it really? Or is it perhaps only beginning?

Under the Whispering Door

Smells like: chai, peppermint, gingerbread

Looks like: mismatched sconces, lush plants hanging from the ceiling of a whimsical tea shop, a vintage scooter.

Tastes like: Warm scones with clotted cream

Sounds like: a crackling fire, tea cups on saucers,

Feels like: a warm cup of tea in your hands,

Pairs well with:

Lines worth keeping:

“Wallace wondered what it said about his life (and death) that he’d ended up in a kitchen in a lopsided house in the middle of nowhere wearing nothing but a bikini.”

“When was the last time you ever did anything without expecting something in return?”

“Everyone loses their way at some point, and it’s not just because of their mistakes or the decisions they make. It’s because they’re horribly, wonderfully human. And the one thing I’ve learned about being human is that we can’t do this alone.”

“It helps to laugh, even when you don’t feel like laughing. You can’t be sad when you’re laughing. Mostly.”