Synopses & Reviews
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Scott Westerfeld comes a smart, thought-provoking novel-within-a-novel that you won't be able to put down.
Darcy Patel has put college on hold to publish her teen novel, Afterworlds. With a contract in hand, she arrives in New York City with no apartment, no friends, and all the wrong clothes. But lucky for Darcy, she's taken under the wings of other seasoned and fledgling writers who help her navigate the city and the world of writing and publishing. Over the course of a year, Darcy finishes her book, faces critique, and falls in love.
Woven into Darcy's personal story is her novel, Afterworlds, a suspenseful thriller about a teen who slips into the "Afterworld" to survive a terrorist attack. The Afterworld is a place between the living and the dead, and where many unsolved — and terrifying — stories need to be reconciled. Like Darcy, Lizzie too falls in love...until a new threat resurfaces, and her special gifts may not be enough to protect those she cares about most.
Review
"Westerfeld masterfully creates two divergent reading experiences (YA romance and fantasy horror) with two distinct yet believable voices....Westerfeld, author of the hugely popular Uglies and Leviathan series, goes meta in a big way." Booklist, Starred Review
Review
"[T]his is a book that can be enjoyed on multiple levels. The blend of realism and supernatural is especially strong." School Library Journal
Review
"Afterworlds is a young adult tour de force, a ghost story par excellence, as well as a compulsively readable treatment of the writing and publishing experience, seen through the eyes of a teenage author....This unique novel is a thick book that reads like a thin book because of how fast readers will turn the pages to find out what happens next." VOYA
Review
"A masterful accomplishment...unmistakably Westerfeld, in full command of a prodigious talent, doing something complicated and difficult and making it look easy, even as it grabs you and drags you through its dark streets, laughing and crying along with both Darcy and Lizzie." Cory Doctorow, boingboing.net
About the Author
Scott Westerfeld is the author of the Leviathan series, the first book of which was the winner of the 2010 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Fiction. His other novels include the New York Times bestseller Afterworlds, the worldwide bestselling Uglies series, The Last Days, Peeps, So Yesterday, and the Midnighters trilogy. Visit him at ScottWesterfeld.com or follow him on Twitter at @ScottWesterfeld.