This Is Not the End

There are many YA books that write about the subject of death with varying degrees of success. For example, there is Looking For Alaska by John Green, where the main character has to deal with the sudden death of a personal friend. This is Not The End by Chandler Baker takes a slightly different route on the topic by asking the question, what if this someone dying didn't mean the end of their life?

In the book, we follow Lake Devereaux, a girl who has a nice boyfriend, Will, and a fun friend, Penny, as they seemingly enjoy life to the fullest. That is, until all three of them get into a car crash, resulting in the death of Lake's boyfriend and friend. Lake now has a decision to make: on her eighteenth birthday, she has the ability to revive one person back from the dead, and she doesn't know who to pick. Add to that her brother, Matt, who is a quadriplegic, after a freak accident caused an injury to his spine resulting in the loss of feeling in all four limbs. Prior to the car crash, Lake had agreed to revive her brother, after he plans to ‘accidentally' fall into a pool and drown. Now she has three people to pick from to revive. Who will she pick, or will she pick anyone at all?

One of the major ideas of this book that I like is the initial premise. The idea of being able to bring someone back to life is one that I find interesting to see, as the author shows how that can be used, and misused, for someone's gain, be it personal, political, or social. There are those, like Matt and the main character's parents, who want to use it to bring their son back from a major accident. Then there are the parents of Will and Penny, who want to bring back their children from death in order to help them make sense of what happened. This decision is one that the reader understands as emotionally heartbreaking for anyone, let alone a 17-year-old girl who has just lost her two best friends and has already pledged her resurrection to her brother as well.

I also liked the relationship between Matt and Lake As someone who has had to take care of someone who needed 24-hour care, I can sympathize with everyone in the situation. Lake doesn't like that, since the accident, her brother has become mean-spirited and hurtful. Matt doesn't like how his life has been changed forever, with one chance to change it, and their parents can't see themselves taking care of Matt for the rest of their lives. The writing is strong enough that I believe any reader can understand Lake and her parent's urge to make this decision to help her brother. This all makes the main character's decision one that a reader can understand from every angle, especially the final resolution.

There is also a great plot twist in this book. The twist is also one that I didn't see coming, but it is the best kind of twist. A good twist is one that, once revealed, can be seen if you go back and re-read passages of the book. It is the same here, given what we know about Lake, and when we meet her in the story.

The biggest problem with this book for me is a subplot that has spoilers in it. To that end, I will detail them below.

We find out that Penny and Will were secretly texting each other behind Lake's back. While this was interesting at the time of reading it, now after having set this book down for a while, can I safely say it doesn't matter. I feel it was the author trying to inject some teenage drama into the larger moral question of who to revive, and it just didn't work for me on a basic character level.

This makes me say that this book was very well done, considering the premise and how it was explored in multiple ways. I think that this book was very well done and it is going to be a candidate for book of the year for me. I give it a four out of five.