In an extraordinary feat, Scott Westerfeld (Uglies; Leviathan) devises a complete novel within a novel: his tale about 18-year-old Darcy Patel, who's publishing her first YA novel, as well as the paranormal romance--in its entirety--that Darcy is writing, called Afterworlds. They alternate chapter by chapter, and both will grip readers.
Darcy's story unfolds in the third person from her point of view, and opens with her e-mail to a literary agency, resulting in a two-book deal "for an astonishing amount of money." Readers first meet her heroine, narrator 18-year-old Lizzie Scofield, when she survives a terrorist attack in an airport and emerges with the ability to travel between the real world and what comes after; they learn along with her the rules of this fictional world--the importance of names, what keeps ghosts "alive" and what destroys them--and watch Lizzie's developing romance with "a smoldering Vedic psychopomp."
Westerfeld masterfully sets up the parallels between Darcy's and Lizzie's stories in such a way that a rippling in any subplot affects them all. He posits the idea that the characters one creates have full and thriving lives, and the author has a moral responsibility to be true to them. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness