Weekly Reads: Afterworlds

I received an e-ARC of Afterworlds a few months ago, and despite being super excited to read a new book by Scott Westerfeld, I could not bring myself to tackle a 600 page book on my e-reader. Something about giant books on an e-devices make you just feel like you're reading FOREVER. It helps me to see physically how much further I've gotten into the book, I think. And then once the e-copy expired off of my device, I started to hear ALL of the excitement surrounding the book. And then I was super mad that I didn't just buck up and read it. Luckily my library purchased it right away and I decided to pick it up to read during the month of November. During NaNoWriMo, I allowed myself to read during breaks at work, but free time out of work needed to be spent writing. What better book to inspiring my novel writing than a story that includes a girl who wrote her first breakthrough novel during NaNoWriMo.

The reason the book is so giant is that it's essentially two stories in one. The first story is about Darcy, the young novelist who just sold her first book to a publisher and moves to NYC to work on the sequel. The story within the story (very meta, Scott Dub) is the story she wrote and published, where Lizzie slips into the afterworld during a devastating terrorist attack and falls in love.

Both stories were amazing and helped push me right along when I was reading it. The two stories alternated by chapter, and there was a black bar at the top and bottom of the page for the Afterworlds story to make it easier for the reader to differentiate the two stories.

This was a great book, and a must read.

My rating: 5 stars.

Summary from goodreads:

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.(