Sunday, January 1, 2012 | By: Megzarooni

The Everafter

Author: Amy Huntley
Reviewer: Megzarooni
Madison Stanton doesn’t know where she is or how she got there. But she does know this — she is dead. And alone in a vast, dark space. The only company Maddy has in this place are luminescent objects that turn out to be all the things she lost while she was alive. And soon she discovers that, with these artefacts, she can re-experience — and even change — moments from her life. Her first kiss. A trip to Disney World. Her sister’s wedding. A disastrous sleepover. In reliving these moments, Maddy learns illuminating and frightening truths about her life — and death. (Via Shelfari)

The Everafter is an interesting quick read novel that illustrates a new concept to one of humanities biggest questions; Is there life after death? Maddy knows she’s dead, but she’s also aware of the fact that she’s not a stereotypical ghost.  In the novel she describes herself as being something close to a misty substance that takes on a nonspecific form that can still talk, think, and move. I liked the fact that Maddy knew that she was dead and states so in the first line of the novel. It’s a strait to the point set up that created a title wave of questions in my head. How did she die? Why? Will we find out now or later in in the book?  Is she in the afterlife? Limbo? Haunting the living?
       Amy used snippets of poetry in her novel, from very well-known authors such as Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, both of which are two of my favourite poets. They’re well placed throughout the novel and in my opinion, enrich certain parts of the story.  It was also nice to have Huntley’s characters explain their personal depictions whenever the poems were used, my favourite being how one characters explained their use of Emily’s poetry as a copping method for grief.
       Now onto IS; The vast black space filled with lost things. When I read the description for The Everafter the idea of lost things being able to help you relive some of your past experiences was what really attracted me to the novel. Because Maddy is dead, and has thus lost her life, it only seems fitting that she can temporarily gain back her mortality through objects she had lost while alive. Through the objects the reader views disjointed parts of Maddy’s life that jump between her infancy to the year that she died at 17. In one chapter she’s six, in another 17 and with the following object we’re pulled back into an 8 year old. All the objects play a special role in helping Maddy discover both the powers she now contains as a misty ghost, but also about how she’s able to affect and change IS.
       I recommend Amy Huntley’s The Everafter to anyone who have read and enjoyed Lauren Oliver’s Before I fall and Jay Asher’s 13 Reasons Why, for it has the same kind of feel to it. I cried while reading all three of these novels.

3/3 Cat names (Read the book and you’ll understand the odd scoring here)

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