WeHa Book Club

*Spoiler-Free Review*

I won’t lie; this one was a bit of a letdown for me. And I honestly don’t mean to imply that it was an unenjoyable read or that it was even ‘bad’ in any way. I think I just set the bar too high, unfortunately.

I had just read and loved two Gabrielle Zevin novels over the past few weeks and was disparately looking for more. After giving out a rare 5 star review for her latest work, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, I picked up her 2014 novel The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and gave that 4.5 stars.

Furthermore, I really liked how Zevin wrote for young characters like Sam and Sadie at the beginning of Tomorrow or Amelia in A.J. Fikry. So naturally, I was interested in checking out one of her five YA novels and figured I’d start with her first.

Elsewhere has a fantastic premise.

The idea is that when you die, you go to another place called ‘Elsewhere’. You arrive at the age you were when you died and progressively de-age, Benjamin Button style, until you are a baby who gets sent back to earth to be born again.

Our main character is a 15-year-old girl named Liz who was suddenly killed while riding her bike and wakes up in this ‘other’ world. It’s a super interesting concept, but I think it fell victim to a couple of unavoidable circumstances.

Intended for a Young Adult audience, I believe that this book lacked the deep exploration required of such a heady story. And I hesitate to make this point, because I don’t want adult readers to be scared away from picking up a good YA book.

I would recommend Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson or The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune as alternatives. Unfortunately, Elsewhere lacked the emotional weight of some of the better YA offerings I’ve read.

The second unfortunate shortcoming – and I fully admit that I could be wrong about this – comes from when Gabrielle Zevin wrote it. Upon its 2005 release, Zevin was only 27 years old. It was her second offering after Margarettown (not a YA book) and I’m assuming any shortcomings can be chalked up to where she was in her writing career.

Clearly, she is a master storyteller now. I say that without pause. I just thought Elsewhere was a bit more average than some of her other works.

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Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin