Everlost

Shusterman, Neal.  Everlost. New York:  Simon & Shuster, 2006. 

Audience:  12 +, Grade level 7

Genre:  suspense, paranormal fiction

Topics of Focus: the difference between the living world and the spiritual world. Friendship. Obsessive disorder.  

Red Flags:  NONE

An unstable soul makes any person unhappy. A complete change, you lost everything that once ‘felt real,’ Emotions, hunger, thirst and even tiredness aren’t a part of your life anymore. Everything you once knew, even your name, is forever lost. You can’t always hold on to most precious memories. You have become a ghost, which means the thing that you once were when you were living is completely lost now.  

Allie and Nick are “green souls,” eager to find the way out of this torturous world of the dead, but their souls don’t exactly get to the bright white light at the end of the tunnel. Instead, they are stuck in a world between life and death, called the Everlost. Not exactly beautiful place but absolutely way better than Hell or being stuck in the center of the world. (This happens when you stand too long on a living surface. Don’t stand around too long or you will eventually sink to the center of Earth.) You can’t come back to life. 

Allie and Nick are about to take on a journey that no ghost has ever taken before and never will. It is said that there is one person who knows this world as if she had created it herself--Mary Hightower, the self-proclaimed leader, ruler, queen of all the children to the Everlost. Mary is a kid herself, a teenager, 15 years old to be more exact. Only a year older than Nick but the same age as Allie. She has a tower for her and hundreds of lost children souls. When Nick finds Mary he feels as if he has found a home, but Allie is not so sure if she’s willing to spend the rest of her life stuck between two worlds.

Annotation by Juan Ramirez