Review & Readalong ~ Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are beautiful. It's quiet and peaceful. You can't get sick, and you can't get older. In Elsewhere, death is only the beginning...

Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she is killed in a hit-and-run accident. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driver's license. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. And now that she's dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn't want with a grandmother she has only just met. And it is not going well. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?

Full of the most ingenious detail and woven around the most touching and charming relationships, this is a novel of hope, of redemption and rebirth. It is a novel that tells of sadness with heartbreaking honesty, and of love and happiness with uplifting brilliance.

I really liked the concept of this book, I thought it was very unique and a really interesting way to view ‘the other side’.

I really liked our main character Liz, and thought that she actually dealt with the whole situation really quite well - okay there were a few things that made her seem like she was definitely not handling it well but on the whole I think she did good!

I loved her ‘friendship’ with Owen and thought what he did in the beginning was really very sweet. I also loved her interactions with brother too, especially the first one which really made me laugh!

I think the highlight of the book for me though was the dog talk with Sadie & Jen and of course Lucy! I’d love to be able to speak canine and have proper conversations with my dog.

Huge Thanks to Tandem Collective UK and Gabrielle Zevin for my place on the readalong.