Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl
Published by Delacorte Press
Publication date: June 5, 2018
Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction
Bookshop
Beatrice returns from her college freshman year still haunted by the death of her boyfriend senior year. His loss fractured the close-knit popular group they’d been a part of, but when one of them has a party and invites Bea she hopes by seeing the group again she can get the closure she so desperately needs. Instead, in Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl, the party takes an unforeseen turn, throwing Bea and her five friends into a bizarre new world. Rather, a strange version of their world. They’re told,
“Time for you has become snagged on a splinter, forming a closed-circuited potentiality.”
In order to get out of this loop they have to make a unanimous life-changing decision and it’s this that causes them to live the same 24 hours over and over trying to answer the question that seems to be at the center of their situation.
Quite a vague synopsis, but Neverworld Wake is one of those novels where you have to trust the author and let it unspool itself without knowing too many details. Suffice it to say, with multiple characters in their late teens, all with a backstory and different motivations, not to mention secrets, there are innumerable iterations of their lives to play out. All in search of the question and the answer they can agree on to break the loop and return some of them to their lives.
This macabre Groundhog Day worked well despite a type of ending I find aggravating. It diminished the impact of the story and initially felt like an easy way out, but as this is a young adult novel it makes more sense. The momentum and the trajectory of the rest of the story were enough to keep my curiosity stoked and the pages of Neverworld Wake turning.
I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org where your purchases support local bookstores. I will earn a commission (at no cost to you) if you click through and make a purchase.
Leave a Reply