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3.8 AVERAGE
3.8 AVERAGE
beetje kinderlijk geschreven maar echt indrukwekkend verhaal
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
ELSEWHERE by Gabrielle Zevin (Deluxe Edition out Sept 9)
Thank you Netgalley and Macmillan Children's for the earc
Elsewhere. It's where people go after they die. You never get a year older, instead you age backwards each year until you're a baby. And then you go back to Earth. That's what happens to 15 year old Liz Hall. She's unhappy, who wouldn't be? All Liz wanted to do was get older, get her license, graduate, and fall in love. Now, living with her grandmother in Elsewhere, Liz must learn to cope. She doesn't know how to embrace her new life. How do you let go of the only life you've ever known?
Beautiful. Heartwarming. Heartbreaking.
ELSEWHERE is a YA contemporary novel that is poignant and tearjerking. This book was binge worthy. It's different and just so well-written. I've actually only ever read one other book about the "afterlife", and ELSEWHERE is magnanimous compared to that one. I can see why it is a Time Magazine best YA book of all time.
When I first read the description of ELSEWHERE, it reminded me of that movie OLD---except for in ELSEWHERE they are dead and aging backward and in OLD they are aging forward. This book is more than that comparison I made in my mind. It left me baffled and awestruck. I teared up so many times throughout this read.
One thing I do have to nitpick is the pov switch. I'm not a fan when pov's change in the middle of chapters. Nonetheless, ELSEWHERE is a beautiful, beautiful book. I think it stands the test of time and readers today will love it as much as readers did when it was first released.
ELSEWHERE by Gabrielle Zevin (Deluxe Edition out Sept 9)
Thank you Netgalley and Macmillan Children's for the earc
Elsewhere. It's where people go after they die. You never get a year older, instead you age backwards each year until you're a baby. And then you go back to Earth. That's what happens to 15 year old Liz Hall. She's unhappy, who wouldn't be? All Liz wanted to do was get older, get her license, graduate, and fall in love. Now, living with her grandmother in Elsewhere, Liz must learn to cope. She doesn't know how to embrace her new life. How do you let go of the only life you've ever known?
Beautiful. Heartwarming. Heartbreaking.
ELSEWHERE is a YA contemporary novel that is poignant and tearjerking. This book was binge worthy. It's different and just so well-written. I've actually only ever read one other book about the "afterlife", and ELSEWHERE is magnanimous compared to that one. I can see why it is a Time Magazine best YA book of all time.
When I first read the description of ELSEWHERE, it reminded me of that movie OLD---except for in ELSEWHERE they are dead and aging backward and in OLD they are aging forward. This book is more than that comparison I made in my mind. It left me baffled and awestruck. I teared up so many times throughout this read.
One thing I do have to nitpick is the pov switch. I'm not a fan when pov's change in the middle of chapters. Nonetheless, ELSEWHERE is a beautiful, beautiful book. I think it stands the test of time and readers today will love it as much as readers did when it was first released.
I’m still very confused as to how this book won awards. I was really excited to read this book, but I was disappointed. The book is about a girl, Liz -terrible name for a lead character, by the way- who dies in an accident at the age of almost-15 and all the things she experiences in the ‘Afterlife’. Death is portrayed as going in a cruise to an island called Elsewhere where people ‘live’ backwards. From the very beginning, I noticed how poor the writing style is. I was trying to forgive her because it’s written about an almost 16 year old, but it just sounded like something a 12-13 year old would write. The idea is great, it really is, but the execution was dreadful. The writing style ruined it all for me. I normally don’t notice writing styles, but this time, I was so aware of it. I wondered if I wrote like a child too and I began questioning everything. The only ‘okay’ writing parts were the parts narrated by the adults. Everything else was childish. Also, her attempt at creating excitement and ‘hints’ was really terrible.
It just sucked. This book sucked a lot. The most annoying part, which actually left me laughing so hard because it was fucking stupid, was the ‘Last Words’ department. Her last word was most definitely not a fucking word. The great part was that it was short, that’s all. I read it in under 5 days. I could have read it in one day, but it was such a torture. I kept reading, hoping it would improve, it didn’t. Also, a lot of the thoughts in this book weren’t thoroughly thought through. The love interest was rather disgusting, really. I don’t understand how people don’t see it as ‘wrong’. I don’t want to ‘ruin’ it, but the writer really doesn’t know how to balance between mental age and physical age at all. Liz doesn’t even sound or act like a ‘teenager’. I think you should be very well informed to write about teenagers, you should never write from ‘memory’ because it’s most often incorrect.
The book is just a waste of time. Don’t bother reading it.
I really should stop reading ‘teenage’ books because they always leave me disappointed and angry.
It just sucked. This book sucked a lot. The most annoying part, which actually left me laughing so hard because it was fucking stupid, was the ‘Last Words’ department. Her last word was most definitely not a fucking word. The great part was that it was short, that’s all. I read it in under 5 days. I could have read it in one day, but it was such a torture. I kept reading, hoping it would improve, it didn’t. Also, a lot of the thoughts in this book weren’t thoroughly thought through. The love interest was rather disgusting, really. I don’t understand how people don’t see it as ‘wrong’. I don’t want to ‘ruin’ it, but the writer really doesn’t know how to balance between mental age and physical age at all. Liz doesn’t even sound or act like a ‘teenager’. I think you should be very well informed to write about teenagers, you should never write from ‘memory’ because it’s most often incorrect.
The book is just a waste of time. Don’t bother reading it.
I really should stop reading ‘teenage’ books because they always leave me disappointed and angry.
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Elsewhere begins with a death, as fifteen-year-old Liz Hall wakes up on board a ship after she is killed in a road accident. The ship is bound for a place called Elsewhere, and Liz’s grandmother is there to welcome her to the afterlife and help her get settled in to her new home. In Elsewhere people’s lives run backwards, so they become younger with each passing year until they are tiny babies again, when they are sent back to Earth to be reborn.
Liz is understandably upset at being parted from her home and family, and feels angry at having been killed so young and knowing that she will never graduate, learn to drive, fall in love or do any of the things she was looking forward to in life. We follow her as she tries to come to terms with her new existence, begins to make new friends and carve out a place for herself in Elsewhere.
This started really well, and I loved the idea of Elsewhere and the way it worked. The afterlife is a great subject for fiction, as it’s always interesting to read different interpretations of what it might be like. Liz is a little bratty, but she has good reason to be so it’s easy to make allowances for her behaviour, and she’s basically a likeable character. But after such a promising beginning, I was really disappointed when the story seemed to lose its way about halfway through. It suddenly became very rushed, as though the author got bored and just wanted to finish the story as quickly as possible, and all the character development went out the window in a mad dash for the finish line. As a result, the book ends up much too short, and skims over situations and relationships which I would have loved to have read about in more detail.
For someone who says they don’t really like YA I’ve read quite a lot of it lately, but this book unfortunately reminded me of the reasons I dislike a lot of this genre. I missed the character and plot development that comes in a more adult book, and by the end I felt kind of unsatisfied.
Liz is understandably upset at being parted from her home and family, and feels angry at having been killed so young and knowing that she will never graduate, learn to drive, fall in love or do any of the things she was looking forward to in life. We follow her as she tries to come to terms with her new existence, begins to make new friends and carve out a place for herself in Elsewhere.
This started really well, and I loved the idea of Elsewhere and the way it worked. The afterlife is a great subject for fiction, as it’s always interesting to read different interpretations of what it might be like. Liz is a little bratty, but she has good reason to be so it’s easy to make allowances for her behaviour, and she’s basically a likeable character. But after such a promising beginning, I was really disappointed when the story seemed to lose its way about halfway through. It suddenly became very rushed, as though the author got bored and just wanted to finish the story as quickly as possible, and all the character development went out the window in a mad dash for the finish line. As a result, the book ends up much too short, and skims over situations and relationships which I would have loved to have read about in more detail.
For someone who says they don’t really like YA I’ve read quite a lot of it lately, but this book unfortunately reminded me of the reasons I dislike a lot of this genre. I missed the character and plot development that comes in a more adult book, and by the end I felt kind of unsatisfied.
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
What if when you die instead of heaven there is Elsewhere? Here in Elsewhere you age backward. Liz Hall was 15 years old when she died. Instead of becoming an adult she'll grow younger and never experience adulthood. The concept of growing younger was an interesting one. I liked that after death you would still have a form of life. I liked the people that Liz met and interacted with while in Elsewhere. I loved the lessons that she learned through the book.
emotional
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes