Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl

Five former high-school friends gather for a reunion. The sixth member, Jim, mysteriously died over a year ago. Beatrice Hartley (Bee for short) hasn’t spoken to her best friends since the mysterious death of her boyfriend. She knows they weren’t where they claimed to be the night of his death. When the opportunity to see them again comes up, she can’t turn it down. Their night together ends in a car accident that thrusts the friends into the Neverworld Wake – a lost dreamland between life and death where only one of them can survive. The friends must vote on who gets to live.

When you can’t trust what you know, how can you expect to figure out who can be trusted? In this version of purgatory, secrets come out and, with them, a last chance at answers. Neverworld Wake challenges reality and the idea of linear time in a thriller mystery.

Marisha Pessl is the bestselling American author of Special Topics in Calamity Physics and Night Film. Never World Wake is her YA debut. It is an imaginative tale with twists and turns leading up to the inevitable vote for survival. Marisha Pessl makes us wonder – who would you choose? Fans of One of Us is Lying and 13 Reasons Why will love this book!


Cindy Morris works as a bookseller at Readings Carlton.