The Everafter

Amy Huntley wrote The Everafter as a quiet YA novel about death and memory. The protagonist Madison wakes up in a strange in-between space after she dies. The objects she lost during her life float around her, and touching one sends her back to that moment to relive it from inside her own past self.

The reader pieces together the shape of Madison’s life and her death along with her. Huntley keeps the mystery of how Madison died at the center, but the book is more interested in Madison’s relationships with her family, her boyfriend, and her best friend than in the puzzle.

The writing is restrained. The book trusts the reader to absorb the emotional weight without italicizing it.

For readers who liked Gayle Forman’s If I Stay or Lauren Oliver’s Before I Fall, this is in similar territory. Quieter than either. Worth the few hours it takes to read.