My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Liz Hall doesn't want to be dead. Her last words were "Um", for goodness' sake! She had a life down on Earth. Not a great one, but she had a best friend and a wonderful dog and a little brother who wasn't so bad. Yet at fifteen, she forgets just one time to look before crossing the street on her bike... and is hit by a taxi cab. Liz goes where everyone goes after they die, Elsewhere. It's a lovely place--perfect weather, you can't get sick, and you won't get any older. You can even watch your friends and family with the binoculars on the Observation Decks. No, to the pleasure of most patrons of Elsewhere, you don't get older--you get younger, until Release, when you're sent back to Earth as a baby. Until then, you can just work at your dream job--if you want--and have fun until your release.
Liz doesn't want to move on, though. She wants to have her life back. She wants to get a Massachusetts drivers' license. Can she ever move on?
The book itself has an incredibly creative canon to start on, but I couldn't help but find Liz a bit annoying. Well, let's be frank--either Liz was annoyingly stubborn, or everyone else was annoyingly complacent. Liz's denial of the fact that she couldn't go back to Earth resulted in every bad thing happening to her. And then, it's all gone in a flash. The author couldn't be less subtle about what was going to happen next in every situation, unless it was something completely absurd (which happened at least once). The romance was completely ridiculous and irritating.
Still, it was creative. It wasn't badly written. Not to melodramatic, not too light and airy. The speaking Canine was a bit out-of-place, but hey, why not. It's a magic world, isn't it? Zevin's prose is quick, the dialogue wasn't disappointing.
Overall, worth the read for the world-building. Not so much for the rest.
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