“If you get to change one moment in your life after your death, what would it be?”
Trey Stone has released his latest work ‘A Death Worth Living’ and it is a book worth reading. This novella, published by Inked In Gray Press , is different from his earlier works exploring something far more intimate and crafting a quiet, haunting meditation on life, death, and the memories that linger between them.
Stone has studied archaeology in England, excavated burial sites in the Arctic, and has more guitars than underwear. He began his writing journey in 2015 with ‘The Consequence of Loyalty,’ and hasn’t looked back since. He has published works such as ‘A State of Despair’, ‘A Form of Revenge’, ‘At The Gate’, and ‘Fjordbeist.’ He enjoys hiking, playing guitar and old video games. He currently lives in Svalbard, where he enjoys the midnight sun and the polar night with his wife.
The book begins with the twenty-year old Jacob’s death and what follows is a surreal, dreamlike journey into the afterlife, a realm built of rooms, doors, shadows of the past and memories too painful to relive. His death is a quiet finality, a sudden, cold truth that life has ended. He wakes up not in hospital or heaven but in an empty, calm and unfamiliar room.
Waking up, he meets Eran, an otherworldly androgynous figure with a pale visage whose appearance is divine and surreal. His presence both disturbs and comforts Jacob as he passes through the mysterious red door that leads him not to heaven or hell but to relive fragments of his own life. He finds himself in his father’s house, watches his siblings and his family share moments of warmth oblivious to his presence.
It isn’t time travel or a second chance at living. It’s a memory.
Childhood joy, family warmth, broken bonds, old guilt and moments he never knew he’d missed or forgotten, everything comes back to him now that he’s dead. Each memory pushes him to confront questions he never asked when he was alive: Why do certain moments cling to us and others don’t?
Jacob finds that even in death, nothing is certain. There are no rules he needs to abide by, no instructions he has to follow, even Eran doesn’t tell him what to do. The reader shares the same uncertainty he does, guided only by the pull of mystery and what lies behind the red door, every time it appears.
This book made me reflect on how much of what we are today is made of the tiny moments we have forgotten or overlooked. Our whole life, while constantly trying to move ahead, we forget to look back and see all that we leave behind. We are who we are because of the people we met, the memories we made, the experiences we gained and also the moments we missed.
The book is an extremely personal journey as stated by the author himself. In the foreword, he mentions this book heavily draws from his own childhood experiences. The characters are inspired from the people in his life. He calls it a self-exploration journey and hopes the reader would find what he found in it.
While the work is deeply affecting, it isn’t without its softer flaws. Its reflective, memory-to-memory structure can occasionally slow the pacing, especially for readers who prefer more momentum in storytelling. Eran is an enigma and appears fascinating but remains almost too elusive, and a touch more insight into this character could have added even greater resonance. Still, these are small limitations in an otherwise compelling narrative, and they never take away from the book’s overall impact.
The book’s beauty lies in what it leaves unsaid. It is haunting in the softest, most lingering way. The writing gives space to silence, hesitation, and ambiguity- much like life itself. It’s a book you’ll think about long after closing the final page.
With this release, Trey Stone offers a novel that feels familiar in its intensity yet surprising in its depth. This new work pushes deeper into emotion, atmosphere, and imagination than anything he’s written before. Go read this book and tell us your thoughts in the comments. You can find this book on Amazon , Barnes and Noble , the publisher’s site and the author’s website .
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