Afterworlds

I was really excited and hesitant going into this book. This book is pretty much made up of two different stories and they could be separate books. Being separate, they work on their own but are better together. The first one is about the author of the second one. The second one is the book Afterworlds.

Darcy is this fresh out of high school student that ended up writing an entire novel in a month. (It says it was done in November which I am assuming was for NaNoRiMo). The first perspective is in Darcy's as she learns about who she is as a writer and as a human being. It is pretty much her life in New York as a newly to be published writer. Full of writing deadlines and writing mock-ups. She ends up meeting lots of authors and deals with the struggle of first loves. It was really interesting to read about Darcy. I didn't expect half of the things that she did to happen. You learned about some chapters of Afterworlds before it happens. You get to see her thought process in why she wrote some things for her novel. It was like a behind the scenes for an author that goes through writing revisions.

Now onto Afterworlds, it was a really interesting story. I liked the idea of the afterworld (ha) and how the main character Lizzie dealt with it. As stated a lot in the Darcy's story, the first chapter was very good and set the scene for the rest of the entire story. I really enjoyed reading about Lizzie and how she grows throughout Afterworlds. I do feel like she was left in the dark a lot of the book which I don't think was good for her because it brought on a lot of problems and they could of been avoided if someone would of just taught her about the damn world she is now apart of. I assume that is the growing part of her character development though.

Onto the main man, Yamaraj. He is permanently in the afterworld by choice. He is not dead but has been living there for a very long time. He followed his sister after she died and decided to stay with her in the afterworld and look after ghosts that have also passed. I wasn't as interested in his character as I thought I would be. They didn't go that much in depth about who he was and his past. We only learned a little bit. I guess since this book wasn't really about the romance between him and Lizzie. It was just something that helped the story along. I wasn't very sold on their “relationship”.

I was anticipating the end of Afterworlds because Darcy spent a very long time trying to make the ending the way it should of ended. I really enjoyed how it ended and brought the story all together. I think it was more important to the character development of Lizzie for how it ended instead of the way Darcy had it originally. I think it was a better ending than the other she talked about in her portion of the story.

Overall, I really enjoyed Afterworlds and I liked the idea of the two stories. I think Scotty Westerfeld wrote it really well and intertwined the two together beautifully. As the story went on, I was more interested in Lizzie's story but that doesn't mean that I did not like Darcy's. This entire book was 600 pages and the time just flew by. It was a pretty easy read and I enjoyed it all. I would recommend this to read.