Neverworld Wake – Marisha Pessl
With its foggy shore, the cover of Marisha Pessl’s Neverworld Wake is almost as eerie as the story itself — and it’s equally as compelling, too. Pessl’s young adult thriller novel follows five teenagers, as depicted in the cover art. They get into a car crash on the way home from a concert one rainy evening and consequently find themselves in a splinter in time referred to as a “Neverworld Wake.”
Hovering between life and death, they’re informed by a man who calls himself “The Keeper” that only one of them can return to the world of the living. That person must be unanimously voted for by the group. Until they vote for someone to live, they will all be stuck in the wake, forced to relive the same 24 hours on repeat.
And as the group copes with the fact that four of them must die, they come to the realization that solving the mysterious death of their friend Jim is the key to solving the issue of the wake. This mystery takes them down a path full of psychological twists and turns, for both the characters and the reader.