Afterworlds

Darcy is a high school graduate who, during November of her senior year, managed to not only write a 60,000 word novel, but to get it published by a prestigious New York agency. As she embarks upon a new journey and moves to New York City to pursue her dream, Darcy starts to realize that the life of a writer may not be as glamorous as she thought. While Darcy struggles to edit her novel, Afterworlds, by her deadline, we also get a look inside the story, which features a girl named Lizzie who, after a brush with death, has been given a new calling: guiding the spirits that walk our world.

Afterworlds is both clever and intriguing and won’t disappoint fans of Westerfeld’s best-selling Uglies series. Stories cut into two halves typically aren’t my favorite, but in Darcy and Lizzie’s case, I actually thought it worked well. I started out liking Darcy’s story better, but as the novel progressed, my intrigue shifted to Lizzie’s tale, so I enjoyed both halves throughout the book. And the way Westerfeld juxtaposes Darcy’s struggle in the literary world with the content of Lizzie’s paranormal experiences makes the story so enjoyably ironic.