Refreshingly supportive functional relationships are my favorite aspect of this YA novel.
My favorite character is probably the younger, perspicacious, financial wizard of a sister.
There are two stories here, one about a young girl finding her feet in New York as a recognized but as yet unpublished writer, the other about a young girl who experiences a traumatic event that introduces her to the after-world. They both kept my interest and seemed quite artfully interwoven.
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I may write a fuller review later, but this was fun and well-executed, a story of a young woman developing the maturity to tackle adulthood and art. Darcy's story was great, and while I'm not a big enough fan of paranormal romance to fully appreciate the Lizzie arc, it was exciting and well-crafted and I was engrossed in it because it was Darcy's book.

Imogen is such a lovely character, warm and prickly and young and self-aware and very very human. Can we please, please have more romantic leads of both genders written as sensitively as she is written. ( )

Coincidentally, the second book in a row where there are two stories going on at the same time, in alternating chapters. It's kind of fun, kind of annoying, when a book is set up this way. Luckily for this book, it's written by Scott Westerfeld, who is a great storyteller and brings a natural voice to his teen protags. Story One is a unique yet typical YA supernatural romance. Story Two is a realistic YA about the young woman who writes Story One. It's meta. It's written for YA novelists and the readers and librarians who love them. As a (former YA) librarian and a freelance copyeditor I especially loved this one. ( )

This book was a horrible let down for me, personally. I like Scott Westerfeld, but I did not like this book.

I thought the fact that there were two ongoing stories would be incredible, but the book seemed incredibly unrealistic. Yes most supernatural and fantasy books seem unrealistic, but those are written so you believe it. This book seemed to exaggerate everything and left me feeling like this could never happen, not even in a fantasy universe.

Every moment of this book I felt like putting it down, and I actually did for over a week. I was so bored and fed up with this book I had to put it down. That doesn't mean this book isn't good, it's clearly for a much younger audience (maybe the pre-teen, early YA audience). This book was clearly not made for me, which is totally okay! Once I realized that I was able to pick the book up and try to read it in the perspective of a young reader.

Scott Westerfeld did an excellent job blending the stories together and showcasing potential future careers for the young audience.

Overall, this book was totally unrealistic, the problems the main character had were so little and small they weren't even a conflict in my eyes, and it was a boring, slow, long read for me as an adult.

But, for a young reader this would be perfect. Often young readers have "problems" that don't seem like problems to adults. They don't see some boy giving them a flirty look as a disaster, while some pre-teens would. The severity of the problems level that of the younger audience, so it would be perfect for them.

It is also written in the perfect tense and speed for a young reader. It moves slow for me, since I like action, but a pre-teen audience loves the longer books with pre-teen conflict! And, since this book has two stories in one, it will keep the younger audience interested with two conflicting stories.

Scott Westerfeld wrote an incredible book for the younger audience! I will give that to him. He literally wrote it perfectly for them! Sadly I am no longer in that audience. SO, it is important for adults to realize before they read a book by an author they like (if they are picky about the way it is written) to RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH before the buy or read a book!

Less than one star out of five if I could because this is not meant for the adult audience. This is meant for a pre-teen, young YA audience. For the pre-teen, young YA audience it is about 3.5 stars.

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. ( )

Afterworlds is a book told in two storylines -- the first, that of Darcy Patel, the author of the book Afterworlds, who writes the book in a month during high school and is very quickly picked up by a publisher. She puts college on hold, and moves to New York to write the rest of the series and get some serious exposure to the writing world; the other, that of her protagonist, Lizzie, who finds she can move between the world of the living and the world of the dead following a terrorist attack, and who just wants to make things work, protect her friends, and maybe have a little more to do with this mysterious boy she's met in the other world.

Unfortunately, I had to put this book down at around 40%, because both Darcy and Lizzie were just too shallow for me to deal with well, and that's fair, because I'm not the target audience. I was gritting my teeth during Darcy's portions of the book because it was just too... you know, handwavey. She's hanging out with tons of authors, and it's all so easy... I ended up looking forward to Lizzie's parts of the book, but even then, there were times I just wanted to yell, "Dude, really? Don't be a dumbass." After too many of those, I realized I just wasn't enjoying myself and moved on. Again, I am not the target audience -- a mid-teen range would be very much at home in this book.

Related: I am very, very glad to see young adult starting to look at nontraditional relationships and sexual orientations. Kudos, Mr. Westerfeld. ( )