Is Colette Decides to Die Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Overview

Colette is the only apothecary in her city, which means she's permanently exhausted and permanently alone - nobody has time to notice her, including herself. So she decides to die, jumps into a well, and wakes up in the underworld instead of wherever she expected. Hades, its ruler, has a fever nobody can cure, and Colette - still an apothecary at heart even in the afterlife - ends up treating him. The job turns into something closer to companionship, and the manga becomes a loose, gentle retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth, minus the abduction and most of the tragedy.

It's a shōjo fantasy romance built on a premise that could have gone very dark, and the choice to keep it warm instead is the most interesting thing about it.

What it does well

The tone is the series' best trick. A story that opens with its heroine attempting suicide could easily tip into melodrama, but Colette Decides to Die treats her exhaustion and loneliness with real sympathy rather than turning it into a spectacle, and then pivots into something closer to a cozy found-family fantasy once she's in the underworld. That tonal control - taking a genuinely dark setup seriously without letting it curdle the whole book - is harder to pull off than it looks.

The underworld itself is a strong setting choice. Rather than being a backdrop of eternal punishment, it's populated with souls who get their own small, often bittersweet stories, and Colette's apothecary instincts give her a reason to actually engage with them instead of just observing. Zeus showing up in cat form is a small, well-placed bit of levity that keeps the book from taking its own mythology too preciously.

Hades and Colette's slow-build relationship benefits from that same restraint - it grows out of her genuinely caring for his health and his loneliness as a ruler nobody else gets close to, rather than out of a contrived meet-cute.

Where it falls short

The pacing can meander. Because so much of the appeal is in small, episodic encounters with underworld residents, the overarching plot sometimes takes a back seat for stretches, and readers looking for a tighter arc may feel the drift.

The side-god cast, while charming in small doses, doesn't always get room to be more than their mythological function - Dionysus and Zeus mostly show up to add color rather than to develop as characters in their own right.

Verdict

Colette Decides to Die takes a premise that could have been grim and turns it into something genuinely comforting without losing its emotional honesty. If you want a mythology-flavored romance that treats its heroine's exhaustion with real care instead of melodrama, it's a quietly rewarding read. If you need a tightly plotted arc rather than an episodic, wandering one, it may test your patience.