Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl REVIEW

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Started:

Finished:

Spoliers: Yes / Minor

An intriguing, and often a little trippy whodunnit.

This is basically Groundhog Day meets One of Us is Lying with a little splash of We Were Liars.

But adding flavours of We Were Liars to any book is like baking with salt instead of sugar.

Why? And just don't.

Characters

Not gonna lie, I had a hard time connecting to any of these kids. Maybe because they were all pretty awful people. Except Martha. She was cool. The rest were pretty shitty people tbh. I didn't find them relatable or sympathetic, or even that likeable. But I didn't hate them either. They were okay, but not much more than that.

Plot

Five kids wake up from a car accident to find themselves living the same day over and over, trapped in the Neverworld. Only one of them can live and return to normal life. But first they need to find how how their friend Jim died and what really happened.

I felt more invested in the Jim plotline than I did the Neverworld plotline. I didn't really care which one of them survived but I was fascinated to learn more about Jim. He certainly felt like the most developed and complex character of the bunch. But even he was a shitty person, so its difficult to get too invested.

Though the Neverworld Wakes were an interesting idea and I did enjoy it, I may go as far as saying I might have preferred this without it. I know the Neverworld is what separates this book from other YA whodunnit thrillers, but the mystery of Jim's death was so much more compelling that it made me not care about the Wakes, or the conclusion of them. I just wanted to uncover more about Jim.

Setting

The Neverworld was cool.

(But did we really need another groundhog day story?)

What made it more interesting was the characters ability to move through time. That added a new layer to the trope and this was the saving grace of the Neverworld. If it wasn't for the timeline hopping, I think I would've got bored with it.

This slight twist to the trope opening up a whole new dimension to the story, and I think its was at that point I sat up and started to really pay attention.

If you're going to use an old trope, do something fresh with it, and I believe the author has done that here, so credit where it is due. Good stuff.

Writing Style

There wasn't any suspense because of [the story's perspective. Writing an 'only one of us survives' book in 1st person is a really bad idea. It kinda just makes it really obvious who's going to live. 3rd person limited would've been so much better.

I also felt a little cheated at the climax. I spent the whole book trying to figure out which one of them did it and the truth was underwhelming compared to what I'd predicted in my head.

But let's be real, a whodunnit only works if readers have a fair shot at figuring out the mystery. I feel this opportunity was taken away when [ it was revealed that our POV character knew all along what had happened to Jim. This isn't fair on the readers and exactly why this shouldn't have been written in 1st person limited. Beatrice knew and didn't disclose this insight to the readers. The whole book she acted like she didn't know what happened and then when the truth is finally revealed we're invited to witness her flashback. Nowhere is it stated that she forgot and suddenly remembered. I felt lied to by a character I was trusting to guide me through the mystery.

Final Impression

On the whole, I enjoyed this book but was hoping for a stronger ending.