AUTHOR: Scott Westerfeld
PUBLISHED: September 23rd, 2014
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Realistic Fiction, also kind of Paranormal...it's complicated.
PREMISE: A young writer just gets a big book deal and moves to New York City to start her writing career...
MY REVIEW: This is such a departure from what Scott Westerfeld usually writes so I'm not really shocked that many of his fans didn't like it. Me...I'm firmly on the fence. I guess you could say I liked the idea of it and what the author was doing more then the final product itself.
I do love the way Westerfeld set up the story for sure. He sort of has two stories going here. You have Darcy, the young writer, moving to NYC and discovering the pitfalls of being a new writer and making those deadlines. Then alternately, we get to see the story that Darcy wrote, called Afterworlds (hence the name) which is your typical YA paranormal sort of story. It's a clever idea. Because we get to see Darcy and see her grow, at the same time we get her book and see her influences in it. There's a lot of meta on the YA book world as well. Which I admit, as someone who is writing a book (don't ask how it's going, just...don't), I found interesting. Also, if you're looking for diversity in your reading, Darcy is Indian and also falls in love with a girl while in NYC (and I could go on forever about how much I adore Ingrid).
I'll admit, I didn't like this as much as Westerfelds previous books. I think he wrote this one just to get the story out there. Sometimes writers need to do that. I respect that. It's not his best work ever, but I've certainly read worse.
WHO SHOULD READ: Fangirl fans, Scott Westerfeld fans, those into the behind the scenes action in YA
MY RATING: Three and a half out of Five panicked writers making deadlines
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