Goodreads summary:

"Darcy Patel has put college and everything else on hold to publish her teen novel, Afterworlds. Arriving in New York with no apartment or friends she wonders whether she's made the right decision until she falls in with a crowd of other seasoned and fledgling writers who take her under their wings…

Told in alternating chapters is Darcy's novel, a suspenseful thriller about Lizzie, a teen who slips into the 'Afterworld' to survive a terrorist attack. But the Afterworld is a place between the living and the dead and as Lizzie drifts between our world and that of the Afterworld, she discovers that many unsolved - and terrifying - stories need to be reconciled. And when a new threat resurfaces, Lizzie learns her special gifts may not be enough to protect those she loves and cares about most."

 

3.5/4 stars

Paranormal Romance

Young Adult

 

This is my first Scott Westerfeld book and it was so different for me! Im always about the romance and a book making me experience something different, and this book was TOTALLY different! 

For starters there is two stories in one! :D BONUS!

and the cool thing about the book is that it goes back and fourth between Darcy story and Lizzie story and it is easy to keep up with as well. Darcy story has regular white pages and Lizzie story has black columns on the top and bottom of each pages, and that really helped with keeping track of which story your reading and also made the book look amazing and different, but regardless of the pages it is pretty easy to keep track of each story and follow them.

 

Review of Darcy story:

Darcy was a very different character for me to read. Her love interest and life is different then what I'm use to reading but it was still fun to read. I felt that you would really need to know about the writer/author lifestyle in order to know how writing and publishing process takes place and what needs to be done during the process and Scott Westerfeld really did a great job in showing us what needs to be done and he gave us a hint of what writers go through. I did feel myself wanting to just get back into Afterworlds because certain times I got a little bored with Darcy story and her complaining about her writing and her ending of her book for like half of the whole book. I couldn't really connect with her because of her personality I felt that her personality was sort of stand off-ish and then when she got talking about her religion and stuff It was interesting but didn't really hold my attention for long, and it was interesting to see how Darcy family do certain things and how Darcy and Nisha don't call there mother "mom" it was weird for me. I found it shocking and exciting to see Darcy talk about her book but would be shocked or upset when she mentions things from the book that hasn't came up yet. It honestly felt like I was getting spoiled! but I see that it was approriate because it got us seeing how the story we are reading developed and had it's ideas and make you want to finish Darcy story to see what happens. I felt that Darcy part of the story ended ok I felt that it could of ended a little better.

 

Review of Lizzie story:

Lizzie and the Afterworlds was what kept me hooked on this book, I couldn't wait to see what happened next, The beginning part of Lizzie story was so amazing and interesting reading about the terrorist attack, and experiencing the Afterworlds with her, and reading about the bad man and his murders. There was so much actions and events in the beginning and a little in the middle parts of the story. But after certain events happens I felt that the story went down a hill a little, it wasn't as exciting and even though it wasn't that predictable the ending section wasn't another special which sorta sucks. But overall Lizzie story was still cool and fun to read.

 

Overall, Afterworlds as a book was a new experience for me, It was fun to read one story and then have another one in the next chapters. I thought this idea was very creative and smart.

 

Thank you for reading!