Book Review: Everlost by Neal Shusterman

 

Goodreads Summary: Nick and Allie don't survive the car accident...
...but their souls don't exactly get where they're supposed to get either. Instead, they're caught halfway between life and death, in a sort of limbo known as Everlost: a shadow of the living world, filled with all the things and places that no longer exist. It's a magical, yet dangerous place where bands of lost children run wild and anyone who stands in the same place too long sinks to the center of the Earth.

When they find Mary, the self-proclaimed queen of lost kids, Nick feels like he's found a home, but Allie isn't satisfied spending eternity between worlds. Against all warnings, Allie begins learning the "Criminal Art" of haunting, and ventures into dangerous territory, where a monster called the McGill threatens all the souls of Everlost.

In this imaginative novel, Neal Shusterman explores questions of life, death, and what just might lie in between.

Goodreads Rating: 3.96 stars with over 30,000 ratings

Genre Listing: Fantasy, Young Adult, Paranormal, Fiction, Supernatural, Ghosts

Goodreads Challenge: 7/50 

2021 Reading Challenge: #15 Read the first book in a series you've wanted to start (find the full challenge here

Book Review:

Happy Monday, readers! I am eagerly waiting until it's a good time for bed because I am exhausted. I read an actual book this weekend. By that, I mean a physical book instead of an e-book. For Christmas, the husband and I had bought our friend a trilogy of books by Neal Shusterman. I had got her hooked on the Arch of Scythe series, and after finding more of his work, she thought this one sounded interesting. After she read it, she thought I'd like it as well and loaned me the first two while she read the third. 

The friend was right. I really enjoyed Everlost quite a bit. I can't remember the last time I read YA either, so that was nice. Everlost takes a fascinating take on kids dying. In the Skinjackers series, kids end up in Everlost when they die but didn't make it to where they were supposed to go. In Allie and Nick's case, they were in a car crash and bump into each other in the tunnel to the light. 

The world-building of Everlost is fantastic. There are just little nuanced details sprinkled in that just seem really well thought out. There's this whole aspect of what they can touch or stand or do based on whether or not something died there. It's really interesting, and I felt like it really made the characters interact with their environment. There are also exerts from books that two of the characters write before each chapter. It's very similar to the journal entries before each chapter in the Scythe trilogy that Neal Shusterman wrote. I enjoy them because it gives you additional details about the world that may have not otherwise made it into the story. They're very centered around the perceived rules of Everlost.

I can't really explain why, but this book in my mind was a cross between The Maze Runner and Peter Pan. I tried to explain it to my friend when we discussed the book, and I couldn't give actual reasons for it. It's just that the entire time I was reading it, I either thought of Peter Pan or Maze Runner. 

Character-wise, I liked Allie and Leif more than Nick. I thought he was kind of whiny, and then the whole story arc between him and Mary was just eh to me. I kind of rolled my eyes during a lot of it. Mary was probably my least favorite character. She just seemed kind of uppity to me. I thought The McGill's storyline was pretty interesting, and I figured out who he was pretty quickly. I thought many philosophical questions were surrounding The McGill, but if I go into them, I think that'd give more spoilers than I've probably already given. 

Overall, it's a good story, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes YA Fantasy/Paranormal type stuff. It's under 400 pages and moves pretty quickly. So if you want more of a light read, it'd be good for that. Even though it does cover death, it doesn't come across as particularly morbid. It's a little sad in some spots because of the deaths, but it stays pretty light and humorous. There are even some well-placed puns. I'll definitely be reading the second book soon. The only reason I didn't pick it up last night was the kindle was closer, and my bed was comfy.