Neverworld Wake

April 1, 2018

Gr 9 Up-Secrets, lies, romance, death, unexpected twists and turns-this fast-paced fantasy thriller has it all. After a car accident, Beatrice Hartley and her friends from a fancy private school fall into the Neverworld Wake, a dark and disturbing version of Groundhog's Day. Day after day, Beatrice, Kipling, Whitley, Cannon, and Martha wake up on the same day, in the same place. Only one will escape the endless loop, but not until they solve the mystery of their friend Jim's death. It was ruled a suicide, but Beatrice has reason to believe there was more to her boyfriend's death than anyone suspected. Each of the characters are distinctive, with their own motivations and secrets. As they band together to investigate Jim's supposed fatal leap into the quarry, they also eye each other with distrust. Even before Jim's death and then the accident, nothing was as it seemed at Darrow-Harker School. This is a well-crafted, edge-of-your-seat story with developed characters and pacing that will keep readers hooked. Give to readers who love mysteries, thrillers, and darker fantasy. VERDICT Unpredictable, exciting, and emotionally wrenching, this is a strong purchase for medium and large collections.-Miranda Doyle, Lake Oswego School District, OR

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 9, 2018
Beatrice Hartley, 19, has spent the past year distancing herself from her four best friends after the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Jim, in their senior year. With summer ending and the former friends gathering to celebrate a birthday, Bee decides to find out what they know. The reunion doesn’t go as expected, and a near-fatal drunk-driving accident brings the teens into the Neverworld, a place between life and death, where they live the same day over and over again until they can agree on who gets to survive. Caught between trying to save her life and solving the mystery surrounding Jim’s death, Bee discovers that everyone has a devastating secret. Bestselling adult writer Pessl (Special Topics in Calamity Physics) adeptly creates a compelling nightmare world while maintaining a foothold in realism and providing many wholly unexpected developments. She doesn’t shy away from painting her characters as deeply flawed, allowing their choices in the Neverworld to show who they truly are. Thought-provoking and suspenseful, Pessl’s YA debut delves into questions of whether even close friends are truly knowable. Ages 12–up. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM.

May 1, 2018
Five close friends--who used to be six until one of them died--are together again a year after their graduation from boarding school.Heading back to the mansion where they're staying following a punk-rock concert in Newport, Rhode Island, they nearly collide with a tow truck and barrel off the road into a ditch, setting up a strange journey into the unknown. A mysterious man who calls himself the Keeper tells Beatrice, Kipling, Whitley, Cannon, and Martha that they are trapped in a Groundhog Day-like existence called Neverworld Wake. They will remain in this limbo until the point when they decide which one of them may return to the world of the living. In her young adult debut, Pessl (Night Film, 2013, etc.) manages to keep her first-person narrative moving forward while her characters are stuck in time. She offers philosophical meditations on the meaning of life and death, although they frequently seem imparted by the author rather than arrived at by Beatrice, the narrator, who, having just finished her freshman year at Emerson College, seems too short on life experiences for the depth of these reflections. Given their ghostly state, the characters (all assumed white) are fully fleshed out, each seeking a way to cope in their Neverland existence.An eloquent and haunting tale, especially for philosophically-minded readers. (Fiction. 13-18)

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May 1, 2018
Grades 9-12 There's a lot going on in Pessl's YA debut, but every element has a touch of weird horror that keeps it from going too far off the rails. Bee is estranged from her friends after the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Jim, the year before. The night she attempts an awkward reunion with her old friends, they narrowly escape a terrible car wreck?or do they? When they awake, an eerie man tells them they're doomed to relive the same day until they can come to a consensus about which one of them will survive the crash. Ages of the same day pass, with saintly Bee trying to keep her friends from indulging their basest instincts, until brilliant Martha convinces them that they won't be able to vote on who lives until they get to the bottom of the elephant in the room?Jim's death. Although a few plot elements don't hold together under close scrutiny and the characters border on stock, this novel has ambition to spare, and teens looking for something odd, atmospheric, and twisty will likely be enthralled.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)