The Everafter: Amy Huntley

SUMMARY (Courtesy of borders.com):

A haunting debut teen novel about a girl who revisits random moments in her life through the objects she has lost--and learns surprising things about her life "and" death.

OPINION: 3 STARS

First off, after reading this book, the idea behind it is downright creepy. In death, Madison is able to visit different moments of her lifetime through objects that surround her in death- a rattle, a set of keys, a planner. But as she's watching these moments, she becomes herself and experiences them and when you really think about it, its a chicken and the egg kind of philosophical circuitous track. She experienced these in life but is there again in death but she had to experience them sometime before she died but if she changes them from death, it changes who she is so its like she's doing it the first time but there had to be a life but now she's visiting it... and yeah, you get the point. Something about that is really quite creepy to me, along with the idea of how things play out after death.

The big mystery for the book is Madison realizing she died and finding out how, as well as trying to figure out the whole afterlife thing. I did like that aspect and couldn't help but laugh at the reason why she had no idea how she died. It was so perfect in all honesty and made so much sense.

As a whole, however, I only give this book 3 stars. A big part of it was just too much high school drama and while I don't entirely mind that, I think that has more to do with the fact that I am several years out of high school and don't deal with it every day. There is little character development but I think that is expected and assumed in this kind of story line but I did like how even though most everything was in flashbacks, they told a story in a logical order.

When I finished the book, I still had a lot of unanswered questions and though again, that is expected because it is death, I would have liked a little more substance and explanation about several things. While this is a unique view on death and ghosts, I wish it explained more of what this particular author was going for.