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A boy drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments. He dies. Then he wakes, naked and bruised and thirsty, but alive. How can this be? And what is this strange deserted place?
As he struggles to understand what is happening, the boy dares to hope. Might this not be the end? Might there be more to this life, or perhaps this afterlife?

I’ve had this book on my shelf for a very long time, and I don’t know why I’ve felt so daunted by it. Although this book is fairly long, clocking in at almost 500 pages, it reads so easily and so quickly. It’s been so long since I read a Patrick Ness book and I really wasn’t sure what to expect, but I really enjoyed it.

I don’t know what I quite expected from this one, but it definitely wasn’t what it ended up being. We follow a boy after he drowns as he wakes up in his childhood home, which doesn’t appear to have changed since he was a child and his family moved to America. He is the only person in the world, and nobody appears to have been around for years.

A book… it’s a world all on its own too. 

I was a little concerned where this one would go, as I often feel with dystopian books. This one was the second dystopia/post apocalyptic book I read in January and with both I really wasn’t sure where this was going to go or even where I wanted it to go. I just knew that I’d feel at the end if the outcome was what I wanted or not.

I wasn’t quite sure how I felt at the very end of the book, but overall the outcome was super interesting and inventive. This took a sci-fi turn which I didn’t quite expect but I didn’t mind the way it went. Considering the story mainly focused on one character alone in the world, the pacing felt very fast, and it was interspersed with flashbacks from his life. There were some important topics faced, including homophobia and sexuality in general.

A world made of words, where you live for a while.

Overall, this one was a super enjoyable read. Not quite 5 stars, but one I found really entertaining and I sped through over a couple of days.

★★★★
4 out of 5 stars

-Beth

May your shelves forever overflow with books! ☽

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