Beatrice Hartley is an outcast among her friends. A year since graduation, and she's nervous about rejoining them for the weekend. After spending a night out together, they are driving back to the mansion they are calling home for the weekend when they just barely avoid crashing into another car. Once back at the mansion, a strange man knocks on their door. This was made even more strange by the fact that a terrible storm was occurring at the time. The man says it is now their job to participate in the vote where they must make a unanimous decision on the one among them that will live. Naturally, they are creeped out, but they do not take him seriously. That is, until they wake up the next morning and find out they are living the same day over. They live this day over and over again, losing track of time. Each replay gets a little but worse- secrets are uncovered, fears are brought to life, and past events twist in odd ways. The friends are officially a part of the Neverworld Wake. The only way out is participating in the vote, but how do you choose which of your friends you sentence to death?
Keep in mind that everyone has their own opinion. This review is only
my opinion, and you may have your own, different one. I would take into consideration what I say, but do not make a decision about the book solely based off of this review. Let's begin:
I first found out about this book while I was on a trip to Barnes and Noble with my parents. My mom came over to me with this in her hand and said she thought I might like it. It sounded interesting, so I went home and bought it on my Kindle. It was not my least favorite read of this year, but it ended up not really being for me. There were two major reasons why: the plot and the characters.
Let's start with the plot. It seemed a bit jumpy and scattered. There were times when I was reading that I thought I might have missed something because it jumped a bit. There were also some things that seemed to happen very suddenly and that were sort of random. It felt almost as if the author did not want the book to become super long, so she rushed it too much. One of the biggest aspects of the book's plot was not anywhere in the synopsis of the book, so even though it was a major plot point, it was a bit random. It ended up being my favorite part of the book, though. Perhaps this is because it was the most interesting and organized part of the book. The first half where this thing did not really play too big of a part was kind of boring, so I was grateful when this started playing a bigger role because the book ended up getting a bit more interesting.
I caught a couple of minor plot inconsistencies. For example, Martha starts making a notebook with information on things she wants to understand about how the Neverworld works. However, everything is supposed to reset when the wake ends and they start the day over again. Her notebook should not exist once a new wake starts, but for some reason it does. This does not happen with anything else in the book, so it cannot be explained.
Now for the characters. I just didn't care about them. That may sound blunt and harsh, but it is the truth. I honestly didn't care which of the main characters was the one voted to survive. Characters are the main way I attach to a book, so because I couldn't grow to care about the group of friends, I couldn't attach to the book.
Overall, I ended up giving it 3 stars instead of 2 only because the concept was cool and the second half was slightly redeeming though not much. I feel like this had a lot of potential, but it failed to pack a punch and was underwhelming. In my opinion, it was jumpy, random at times, and sort of boring. It definitely was not for me, but maybe you will think differently.
Rating: 3/5 stars
Author: Marisha Pessl
Publisher: Delacorte Press
# of Pages: 328
Genre: YA, Mystery
Series: Standalone
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