Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Elsewhere, by Gabrielle Zevin
Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvellous. It’s quiet and peaceful. You can’t get sick or any older. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere’s museums. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe’s psychiatric practice.

Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driver’s license. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. And now that she’s dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn’t want with a grandmother she has only just met. And it is not going well. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?

This moving, often funny book about grief, death, and loss will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.

Review:

• I love afterlife books. Elsewhere could've been better but I really liked the whole idea. Everyone in this world dies a certain way and they still get to have fun living in the afterlife, watching over their loved ones who are stuck in the real life.
• It became boring at times, that's my confession. I wish it was more deeper, I wish the novel had some meaning to it... it's definitely not the best contemporary novel I've read. No way.