Afterworlds Review

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

Title: Afterworlds

Author: Scott Westerfeld

Series: None

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Publication Date: September 23, 2014

Genre: Fantasy; Contemporary; Supernatural; Realistic Fiction; Young Adult

Pages: 599

Format: Hardcover

goodreads

Darcy Patel has put college and everything else on hold to publish her teen novel, Afterworlds. Arriving in New York with no apartment or friends she wonders whether she's made the right decision until she falls in with a crowd of other seasoned and fledgling writers who take her under their wings… 

Told in alternating chapters is Darcy's novel, a suspenseful thriller about Lizzie, a teen who slips into the 'Afterworld' to survive a terrorist attack. But the Afterworld is a place between the living and the dead and as Lizzie drifts between our world and that of the Afterworld, she discovers that many unsolved - and terrifying - stories need to be reconciled. And when a new threat resurfaces, Lizzie learns her special gifts may not be enough to protect those she loves and cares about most.

Ohmygod, this book was so bad. Soooo bad. Like, really, really painful. Honestly, how I even finished it I have no idea.

I’m not even going to rewrite the summary. I really do not feel like reliving it.

It’s almost like Westerfeld couldn’t exactly decide between two stories: one, a paranormal romance about a girl who can pass into the Underworld, and two, a young author learning to “discover herself,” so he smooshed them together and called it a book. Too bad that both were absolutely awful.

I’ll start with the paranormal story, aka the fake story that was serving as a fake manuscript. It was actually the lesser of the two horrible evils because this one actually had a plot line. You’re probably thinking, “But wait, don’t all published stories at least have a discernable plot line?” I was once like you, all naïve in thinking that publishers would at least make sure their book had some plot to it, but oh contraire, my dear reader, that apparently is not a requirement. This one did however have a sliver of a conflict and just a bit of a standard plot line. And that is the only good thing I can say about it. Throughout the entirety of this book, all the main character’s fellow author friends kept saying how good her story was and how creative and how amazing. Lies. All of them. The characters left much to be wanted and the story line was utterly atrocious. The world building was virtually nonexistent and did Westerfeld forget how to write dialogue? And even if I wanted to like it, I couldn't because I was being constantly interrupted and reminded that what I was reading was in fact not a real story. How am I supposed to submerse myself in a story when I know it's fake? I’ve read Westerfeld before, and I once was a huge fan of his. I really liked Uglies and The Leviathan series, but this book? He would’ve been better off just not writing it.

Now for the realistic fiction part. Oh god. There were parts in this book where I just all together skipped these sections because I could not stand the main character. She was whiny and did nothing to help herself. And what about using all of your money from a manuscript (that sucks by the way, read above) and spending it on living in New York City instead of college is smart in any way? Seriously. How stupid is this character? And news flash, if you’re going to write a story, you might want to make sure that the story has a plot! Plot is important. Like, really important, and it does not exist here. There was literally no conflict. Absolutely none. I would’ve gotten the same effect if I had read a story about a deer skipping across a field. I was bored out of my mind, and I really saw no point in reading Afterworlds. If this story, no…book (there were no story elements whatsoever, so it really wasn’t a story now was it?) is based on Westerfeld’s real experiences of being published (although I doubt it by how ridiculously unrealistic it is), I feel bad for Westerfeld, and I also don’t see any reason why he should share with us his incredibly boring tale of publishing.  

Overall, two stories were shoved together in a haphazard fashion and without any consideration for the individual stories themselves. The cost was the quality of both stories, and the result was a book I would recommend to no one ever. Let’s just say I wish I had never picked up this horrifying excuse for a book.