I wasn’t expecting such a clever, enjoyable read. Westerfeld has his cake and eats it with two stories happening simultaneously in alternating chapters. Darcy Patel is a very young (just out of high school) writer who puts off going to college and moves to New York City after she lands a major book deal. Her début novel is about a girl named Lizzie who survives a terrorist attack by pretending to be dead and slipping into the afterworld. In the afterworld, Lizzie meets a mysterious boy who cares for souls that have crossed over. Visiting the afterworld has some unexpected and unpleasant effects for Lizzie like being able to see and talk to ghosts. Back in the real world, Darcy is dealing with her first girlfriend, the crazy world of publishing, and living as an adult. To say that she’s juggling a lot of things is an understatement.
I really loved the dueling narratives. Usually with literary devices like this at least one storyline or point of view is a chore to get though. Not so with Afterworlds. Either story would be interesting on their own, but together they are greater than the sum of their parts. It’s fascinating to read the effect each story has on the other. There’s also some seriously entertaining satire and meta commentary going on in these stories. Westerfeld slyly uses Darcy’s journey as an author to comment on and poke fun at the publishing world, right down to the entertaining John Green stand-in.
Overall, it’s a smart, funny, clever young adult novel. It’s on the longer side, but very readable. The alternating chapters make it a hard book to put down. The characters are interesting and relatable even though I occasionally wanted to shake some sense into teenaged Darcy so she didn’t have to learn some lessons the hard way. It was a treat to read about a nuanced and complex lesbian of color. Not something you see too often in the mainstream world of young adult literature.
