This is a fantasy story suitable for YA and up.
Henry has just woken up to find himself dead. Bit of a
conundrum, that. It seems that slipping into the river and drowning has placed
him in a world between life and death along with others who remain at the same
age they died. He is able to go back and see his world but is unable to
interact with it, so when he finds that his family thinks he committed suicide
and his sister is kidnapped, he desperately needs to find a way to get through
to them. With his new friends manifesting powers able in some way to
communicate with the living, maybe they all landed together for a reason? Will
he be able to do the improbable and save his sister?
This is a beautiful story as you are able to visualise both
sides of the coin. You ache for the family left behind and ache for the person
who wants to communicate with them but can't. Guess the moral is to make the
most of the time you have in life. Since this is the first book in the series,
the characters were not very fleshed out but I think more will be given to them
as time goes by. The story itself is very thought-provoking: the trust his
sister places in someone, the loss his family felt at his passing, the
realisation that he was portraying someone to his family that wasn't who he
believed he was and inspiring in that he loves his sister so much that he is
willing to do anything he can to help her. The writing and editing are great
- seamless reading. The only thing that
didn't gel for me was what happened with Curtis at the end - it just felt tacked on and implausible given
the physical constraints explained early on.
Otherwise an unexpectedly moving read and well worth getting
into.
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