 | Layoverland : a novel Author: Noone, Gabby | |
| Price: $8.19 | ||
Summary:
When seventeen-year-old Beatrice arrives in Purgatory and is chosen to help others reach Heaven, the last thing she expects is to fall in love with Caleb, with whom she shares a tragic history.
| Accelerated Reader Information: Interest Level: UG Reading Level: 5.10 Points: 11.0 Quiz: 508845 |
Full Text Reviews:
Booklist - 11/15/2019 *Starred Review* Bea wasn't expecting to die. Certainly not in a car crash after a terrible fight with her sister, who's also her best friend (make that only friend). But when her plane lands at a tacky airport, she's informed she's in purgatory, and, before she can move on to heaven, she must help 5,000 souls figure out what's stopping their upward progress. She's been chosen for the job, her trainer tells her, because her sharpness at spotting others' weaknesses and her ability to manipulate are pluses for those who'll be facilitating at the memory unit. Bea balks; she's a hater, not a helper, but hell is the only other option. If this is beginning to sound like the tv show The Good Place, the similarities are strong. But debut author Noone has created a clever purgatory that contains its own special annoyances (home is a cheap airport motel room, all food is encased in Jell-O) and fresh, funny characters with rich responses to being in the medium place. Alternating with the scenes at the airport are Bea's flashbacks to her death day, with her flaws and faults on full display. But wait, there's also romance! And it's a rich one: Bea learns her crush-worthy patient is the boy who killed her in the crash. Plenty of laughs here, mixed deftly with meditations on what it means to be alive. - Copyright 2019 Booklist.
School Library Journal - 12/01/2019 Gr 7–10—Bea is ugly crying about ruining her sister's life when a huge SUV crosses into her lane. She makes eye contact with the other driver and realizes she knows him from school, then wakes up on a plane with that boy and a variety of other passengers. No one seems to know where the plane is headed, but it soon arrives in an airport where someone is holding a sign with Bea's name on it like they were expecting her. She comes to find out that moment in the car was her last second of life before both drivers died in a head-on collision. They have landed in an in-between place where people are sent to redeem themselves and earn their place in Heaven. Bea hasn't ever given much thought to what happens when you die; now, she is stuck in this airport until she can resolve her issues. With the help of Sadie, her sign-holding friend, Bea learns that she has been assigned to help 5,000 souls discover the one memory that is keeping them from Heaven, then she can join them. All of the people in the airport are given a passport and a lottery number to determine when they get their opportunity to move up. The boy from the crash has no idea that he is responsible for Bea being here, but she is going to make him earn each and every second in Layoverland because she wasn't ready to die. This is a cute read about one conception of the afterlife that is resonant of Gabrielle Zevin's Elsewhere and Wendy Mass's Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall. Do the actions in our daily life and the way we treat others affect our place in the next? VERDICT A lighthearted book about finding oneself and personal redemption.—Jessica Lorentz Smith, Bend Senior High School, OR - Copyright 2019 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.
