When I Was Death

Author: Alexis Henderson

Originally Published: 2026

Rating: ?

written by: Tina Nguyen | date: 20th March, 2026

Roslyn was devastated and almost lost herself after the death of her older sister – Adeline, which happened 8 weeks ago. She decided to join a group of 5 other girls, which… probably has something to do with Adeline’s death, on a mysterious journey that led to the bargain with Death with the hope that she would find out why her sister mysteriously passed away.

Roslyn slowly discovered what it was like to live without regrets, without death, knowing that she had the ultimate protection from Death himself to prevent her from dying during her dispatches with the friend group. However, during her missions, her relationship with Shiloh escalated into something else rather than “just friends”, and apparently, Shiloh had a very close relationship with Adeline, but things turned complicated when Adeline started bringing up her younger sister quite a lot before Death took her away. Facing between her morals and her desires to know about her sister’s death, what would Roslyn choose?

To me, this book did not capture my attention the more I continued so I decided to DNF’ed it :((( I wish I enjoyed it more than this but here are my honest reviews and thoughts on it:

  • About the storyline, I was absolutely hooked at the start because I wanted to find out the reason behind Adeline’s death. But I quickly got bored during Roslyn’s dispatches and the awkward tension between her and Shiloh. I knew Shiloh had secrets and wanted to tell Roslyn something but she kept hesitating and tried to be mysterious just for me to get to the part when Roslyn found out her sister’s death had something to do with Shiloh’s feelings for Roslyn while she was with Adeline. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting this to be the reason why Adeline died, not that I was shocked or surprised, this “plot twist” just did not hit me hard enough or struck my nerves for me to feel something and I DNF’ed after this chapter ended. The fact that Shiloh “felt something” and knew that her heart was meant to belong to Roslyn only through Adeline’s words (without actually meeting or interacting with Roslyn when Adeline was still alive) just did not sit right with me. Overall, this detail about Shiloh’s feelings for Roslyn made the storyline a bit disjointed in my opinion.

  • There were too many unnecessary detailed descriptions in the very small details that made me get bored quickly. OKAY GUYS HEAR ME OUT ALRIGHT, I did not mean that detailed descriptions in books and stories are all boring, what I’m saying is that ‘When I Was Death’ had too many unnecessary details, which probably took paragraphs to read them all. To me, I love it when descriptions of the objects or people actually add to the atmosphere, tensions, or even the clues and hints for the latter plot twists in the books, especially if they were a horror fantasy, which, in this case, ‘When I Was Death’ is one. Otherwise, the very small details should be sufficiently written and should not take up paragraphs to get through. I felt like the pace of this book got slower because of these unnecessary details that had nothing to do with the plot.

  • The book was too focused on the relationship between Roslyn and Shiloh without creating real tensions between Roslyn (the narrator) and other girls in the group (Naomi, Chloe, Riley, and Skye. I wanted to see more important roles of these 4 girls on Roslyn’s journey and what they could add to her life, but I felt like they were all side characters (which I knew they were but I was hoping to see more impacts of these girls on Roslyn and how she had her character developments not only because of Adeline or Shiloh, but also from these characters).

I wish I could enjoy the book more than this, but congratulations to author Alexis Henderson on the debut of this dark fantasy horror book. Looking forward to trying other books from her!!