Book Review: Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl

Title: Neverworld Wake Written by: Marisha Pessl Published: June 5, 2018 by Delacorte (Amazon / Goodreads) Synopsis: Once upon a time, back at Darrow-Harker School, Beatrice Hartley and her six best friends were the cool kids, the beautiful ones. Then the shocking death of Jim—their creative genius and Beatrice's boyfriend—changed everything.  One year after graduation, Beatrice is returning to Wincroft—the seaside estate where they spent so many nights sharing secrets, crushes, plans to change the world—hoping she'll get to the bottom of the dark questions gnawing at her about Jim’s death. But as the night plays out in a haze of stilted jokes and unfathomable silence, Beatrice senses she’s never going to know what really happened.  Then a mysterious man knocks on the door. Blithely, he announces the impossible: time for them has become stuck, snagged on a splinter that can only be removed if the former friends make the harshest of decisions. Now Beatrice has one last shot at answers... and at life.  And so begins the Neverworld Wake.

This book was really good. I had heard good things about the author so when I saw that she was signing copies of this one at ALA, I decided to pick up a copy I am so glad that I did and that I took the time to read it because I really enjoyed it.

I would say that this is the kind of book that you kind of want to go into without much knowledge so I don’t want to say too much. I went into to it thinking it was a mystery and there were definitely some good aspects of the genre. Much of the book is about finding out the truth of something that happened years ago. I really liked the way it all unfolded. It was a complex mystery with a lot of moving parts and things didn’t even fall into place until the very end. It reminded me of some of my favorite mysteries in that way because you didn’t get the full story until every piece of the puzzle was laid out for you.

But I think my favorite part of the book was the other aspect of the plot which is the more sci-fi/fantasy elements. It mentions the “Neverworld Wake” right there in the synopsis but for some reason I had no idea that this was going to happen. And I am so glad I didn’t know anything because it all felt so fresh and interesting. So in the interest of keeping things vague for you I will just say I found this really fascinating and there were lots of surprises that had me pretty shocked in the best possible way.

As far as the characters, they are the characters that I prefer in a mystery. By that I mean they are the kind of people where they are complex and imperfect. If you are going to have a mystery where you suspect one of the characters of doing something wrong you definitely need characters where that seems possible. What I liked about these characters is that they were all unlikely but possible culprits and I appreciated that.

All in all I think that this was a really engaging and interesting read. It kept me hooked from beginning to end and had plenty of moments that surprised me. I am now very interested to read Night Film and experience more of this author's writing.

I give Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl 9.5 out of 10 stars

Buy/Borrow.Bypass: Buy/Borrow. I loved this book and would definitely recommend this to fans of mysteries should check this out especially if you want a book with a subtle sci-fi/fantasy twist.

Have you read Neverworld Wake? What did you think? Leave me a comment with your thoughts. Thanks for stopping by and HAPPY READING!