Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl

 

(hb; 2018)

From the inside flap

“Once upon a time, back at Darrow-Harker School, Beatrice Harley and her five best friends were the cool kids, the beautiful ones. Then the shocking death of Jim─their creative genius and Beatrice’s boyfriend─changed everything.

“One year after graduation, Beatrice is returning to Wincroft─the seaside estate where they spent so many nights sharing secrets, crushes, plans to change the world─hoping she’ll get to the bottom of the dark questions gnawing at her about Jim’s death. She suspects that her friends know much more than they ever let on.

“But as the night plays out in a haze of awkward jokes and unfathomable silence, Beatrice senses she’s never going to know what really happened.

“Then night fades to morning, a thunderstorm rages, and a mysterious man knocks on the door. Blithely, he announces the impossible: time for them had become stuck, snagged on a splinter that can only be removed if the former friends make the harshest of decisions.

“Now Beatrice has one last shot at answers. . . and at life. And so begins the Neverworld Wake.”


Review

Neverworld is an excellent, hard-to-set-down YA people-stuck-between-life-and-death science fiction novel. The setup, initially familiar, is made intriguing by Pessl’s overall superb writing and flow, fresh twists, and fully fleshed characters. This is an above-average read for its key genre, one worth checking out, possibly owning, if you’re open to YA novels.

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