Aftertaste — Daria Lavelle

What if you could have one last meal with someone you've loved, someone you've lost? Combining the magic of Under the Whispering Door with the high-stakes culinary world of Sweetbitter, Aftertaste is an epic love story, a dark comedy, and a synesthetic adventure through food and grief.

Konstantin “Kostya” Duhovny is a haunted man. When he was a child, his beloved father died shortly after their family immigrated to Brooklyn from Ukraine, and ghosts have been hovering around Kostya ever since. Kostya can't exactly see the ghosts, but he can taste their favorite foods. Flavors of meals he's never eaten will flood his mouth, a sign that a spirit is present. Kostya has kept these aftertastes a secret for most of his life, but one night, he decides to act on what he's tasting. And everything changes.

Kostya discovers that he can reunite people with their deceased loved ones -- at least for the length of time it takes for them to eat a meal he prepares for them. He realizes that perhaps his life's purpose is offering closure to grieving strangers -- and that he might finally be able to find closure himself.

Kostya sets out to learn everything he can by entering a particularly fiery ring of Hell: the New York culinary scene. As his kitchen skills begin to catch up with his ambitions, Kostya is too blind to see the catastrophe that looms. And the one person who knows Kostya must be stopped happens to be falling in love with him.

Set in the bustling world of New York restaurants and teeming with mouthwatering food writing, Aftertaste is a whirlwind romance, a heart-wrenching look at love and loss, and a ghost story about all the ways we hunger -- and how far we'd go to find satisfaction. Lavelle's debut is a multi-course tasting menu of a book that will sate, delight, excite, comfort, and inspire even the pickiest of readers.