TLoDOne soul. One pact with the Devil. One chance at love.

Elizabeth Murray has been condemned to burn at the stake. As she awaits her fate, a strange, handsome man visits her cell. He offers her a deal: her soul in return for immortality, but what he offers is not a normal life. To survive Elizabeth must become Death itself.

Elizabeth must ease the passing of all those who die, appearing at the point of death and using her compassion to guide them over the threshold. She accepts and, for 500 years, whirls from one death to the next, never stopping to think of the life she never lived. Until one day, everything changes. She – Death – falls in love.

Desperate to escape the terms of her deal, she summons the man who saved her. He agrees to release her on one condition: that she gives him five lives. These five lives she must take herself, each one more difficult and painful than the last.

Source Format Pages Publisher Genre Publication Date
Random Things Tours ebook 288 Unbound Gothic/Mystery/Romance May 2nd, 2019

 

Lucy Booth Author Photo

 

The writing of The Life of Death is as remarkable as the story it tells. Lucy Booth was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011 and died in 2016. During those five years she wrote this novel and it was her last wish to have it published posthumously.

Many thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me to join the blog tour for The Life of Death. I got the email, I read the blurb and I immediately knew I wanted to read this book. Having learned that the book is being published posthumously, I could link the setting, the characters, the emotion and thoughts around death, hope and hopelessness, and the yearning for love and life to reality. Because Lucy wrote something that spoke to my soul…

The main character in this book is Lizzy. The opening scenes take us to 1500s where Lizzy is about to be burned at the stake for being a witch. But then, Devil comes to her in the last few moments and makes her a deal… die on the stake without feeling pain and be reborn as Death. Death, the Devil’s aid to being there for humans in their last moments.

As Lizzy fills her deathly role, not taking lives, but simply being there in those last moments, it is only natural that as a bystander on the other side, she will start to crave what she cannot no longer have. She was, after all, rather young when the deal was struck. So, when she unexpectedly finds herself deeply, obsessively in love, she will find another way, another deal that might give her the chance for a happy life.

The Life of Death will make the reader process the most horrid, sad and heart wrenching moments. Lizzy’s own internal battle to kill without remorse to get what she wants rages against the humanity left in her, even as Death. I truly found this book captivating, in the most bittersweet way. The ‘will she or won’t she’ game in between her selfish motivations and the unwillingness to let go of her selfless self. There are many moments of dying and death, many moments of loved ones being taken from this life too soon or too alone. Moments of grief and the feelings of how unfair it is that another life has been lost. Moments that us, readers, have more than likely had to endure in our lifetimes and as such can bring back painful memories… But…

The raw moments of emotion as life teeters to death have been written with utmost care many times over and I can’t help but think that Lucy Booth tapped into her most innermost thoughts as she battled with a devil of her own. The ending for our main character Lizzy is inevitable and will yet remain a very intriguing mystery to you… Did she strike a deal with the Devil and get away with it? Did she get a second chance at life? Read yourself to find out.