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Elsewhere

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Book Synopsis

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 very like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backwards 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 driving licence. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. She doesn’t want to get to know a grandmother she’s never met before and have to make all-new friends.

How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Or is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?

Our Review Panel says...

‘Elsewhere’ provides its readers with an intriguing, beautiful take on life after death. 15-year-old Elizabeth (Liz) dies as a result of a hit and run accident and finds herself in ‘Elsewhere’ – a place not dissimilar to Earth, yet completely different. Liz finds it hard to adjust and yearns for the life she will no longer get to live. She spends endless hours, days clinging desperately onto her old life refusing to accept that the life she once knew is over – she even makes a desperate forbidden attempt to make contact with Earth rather than accept her fate and start her new life in Elsewhere. But in doing so, Liz is miserable.

As the story unfolds, and with the help of some important characters that she encounters along the way, eventually Liz realises that happiness is a choice and that clinging to her old life is pointless.

This is a heart-warming, comforting story of dealing with the unpredictability of life, second chances, the power of friendship and love, and the importance of living life to its fullest. It is a well-written, absorbing easy read, which will make the reader smile at its charm.