Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Book Summary and Reviews of Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl

Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl

Neverworld Wake

by Marisha Pessl

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Jun 2018, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About this book

Book Summary

Enter a realm where fears are physical and memories come alive in this absorbing psychological suspense thriller.

Once upon a time, back at Darrow-Harker School, Beatrice Hartley and her five best friends were the cool kids, the beautiful ones. Then the shocking death of Jim - their creative genius and Beatrice's boyfriend - changed everything.

One year after graduation, Beatrice is returning to Wincroft - the seaside estate where they spent so many nights sharing secrets, crushes, plans to change the world - hoping she'll get to the bottom of the dark questions gnawing at her about Jim's death.

But as the night plays out in a haze of stilted jokes and unfathomable silence, Beatrice senses she's never going to know what really happened.

Then a mysterious man knocks on the door. Blithely, he announces the impossible: time for them has become stuck, snagged on a splinter that can only be removed if the former friends make the harshest of decisions.

Now Beatrice has one last shot at answers...and at life.

And so begins the Neverworld Wake.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Thought-provoking and suspenseful, Pessl's YA debut delves into questions of whether even close friends are truly knowable." - Publishers Weekly

"Unpredictable, exciting, and emotionally wrenching, this is a strong purchase for medium and large collections. Grades 9 and up." - School Library Journal

"An eloquent and haunting tale, especially for philosophically-minded readers." - Kirkus

This information about Neverworld Wake was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Marisha Pessl Author Biography

Marisha Pessl, the author of Special Topics in Calamity Physics was born on October 26, 1977 in Clarkston, Michigan.  Her mother, Anne, a schoolteacher, was raised in Brazil and Venezuela, and her Austrian father was a mechanical engineer for General Motors.  Her parents divorced when she was three and she and her sister, Elke (named after Elke Sommer) were brought up by her mother, visiting her father in Austria once or twice a year.  When she was three her family moved to Asheville in Western North Carolina.  According to her publisher's bio, as a middle and high school student she had "more extracurricular activities than Imelda Marcos had shoes", including horseback riding, ballet, tap-dancing and jazz lessons, community theater, drawing ...

... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Marisha Pessl's Website

Other books by Marisha Pessl at BookBrowse
  • Special Topics in Calamity Physics jacket
  • Night Film jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more YA thrillers...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Book of George
    The Book of George
    by Kate Greathead
    The premise of The Book of George, the witty, highly entertaining new novel from Kate Greathead, is ...
  • Book Jacket: The Sequel
    The Sequel
    by Jean Hanff Korelitz
    In Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Sequel, Anna Williams-Bonner, the wife of recently deceased author ...
  • Book Jacket: My Good Bright Wolf
    My Good Bright Wolf
    by Sarah Moss
    Sarah Moss has been afflicted with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa since her pre-teen years but...
  • Book Jacket
    Canoes
    by Maylis De Kerangal
    The short stories in Maylis de Kerangal's new collection, Canoes, translated from the French by ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people... but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

X M T S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.