Back Cover Copy
Ari bets her future on reforming a murderer. The only problem—she's dead and he's her killer.
When Ari is murdered on what she expected to be the best night of her life, the last thing she sees before she dies is the eyes of the boy she loves staring at her from behind an ornate mask
In the afterlife, Ari is given a second chance at life. If she can stop her murderer from killing again and make him atone for his crimes, she can return to the life she loves.
Back Cover Copy
Ari bets her future on reforming a murderer. The only problem—she's dead and he's her killer.
When Ari is murdered on what she expected to be the best night of her life, the last thing she sees before she dies is the eyes of the boy she loves staring at her from behind an ornate mask
In the afterlife, Ari is given a second chance at life. If she can stop her murderer from killing again and make him atone for his crimes, she can return to the life she loves.
Prologue
I’m going to tell you about the night I died.
Now that I’ve arrived here in the life-between lives, everything has changed.
In this idyllic world of soft-focus mountains and watercolor trees, I now view my life on earth with perfect clarity. It’s a paradox, I know, but you’ll understand when you arrive here.
While you’re alive, every action appears so final. You feel that the events happening at the moment are important and absolute. Well, I assure you, they’re not. You get many second chances.
This is my take on the whole thing: when you’re alive in the world, you’re sitting in a movie theater watching a riveting film. You have the starring role, and all the action revolves around you. You’re so engrossed in watching the movie of your life, you actually begin to see through the main character’s eyes.
It’s not until you leave the theater that the reality of your time on earth falls down around you like a stage set, all make-believe. Now I see my life like a word shouted into an empty sound stage. The echo reverberates in ever decreasing intensity, and it grows less significant as time goes on.
But don’t feel sad for me. It’s not about that right now. It’s more about getting at the truth of who murdered me.
Chapter 1
I feel like an imposter here.
Like at any moment, this idyllic life of mine will crash and burn. Then I’ll have to gather all of my belongings into a black garbage bag and move on to the next family.
At the moment, working on my book was the most important thing to me, so I toiled over my laptop until the last possible moment. My labor of love was a memoir, a true recounting of my experiences in the foster system. Having been shuffled around to more than twenty homes in my first fourteen years, I could speak from experience.
But for now, I needed to stop expecting myself to be flawless. Tonight, I was going to break all the rules.
Mom had bought me a fancy cat mask full of rhinestones and sequins for tonight’s costume party. I had to take deep breaths when I even thought about anything covering my face. But I would wear this mask. I settled on a black turtleneck and black jeans. That would make me look “cat woman” enough. I finished off the outfit with a faux leopard coat I’d scored at a local consignment shop and some black leather boots.
The chime of the doorbell made my pulse zing.
I stood at the top of the stairs and watched as my mom gave my boyfriend a big hug. “Jace. Wonderful to see you.” My mom Arlene was thirty-eight, but still cool. A social worker, she took a chance on adopting me when I was fourteen and impossible to place. Yeah. Arlene and Bill changed my life in huge ways.
“Come on in, son.” Dad vigorously shook Jace’s hand, patting his shoulder, all fatherly. My dad, Bill, was about the same age as Mom, but he looked older, probably due to being outdoors a lot. He built environmentally friendly houses.
My mom said to Jace, “Are you going to be warm enough in that? It’s bitter cold outside. I’ve got an extra scarf...”
“Thanks, Mrs. Walsh. I’ll be fine.”
“Ari’s getting ready. She’ll be down in a minute.” Mom called up to me, “Ari! Jace is here.”
“In a minute, Mom.” I descended the stairs, taking my time, since I didn’t want to appear too eager. Standing on the last step, I gazed at Jace, not believing that he was my boyfriend. “Hey there,” was all I could say.
The sparkle in Jace’s eyes as he gazed up at me grew to an intensity of a thousand suns. His dark blue eyes with their gold flecks, fringed with dark lashes, were unusual and so striking. “You look so amazing. But then you always do.” He moved toward me, and in the hallway, out of view of my parents, he gave me a luscious kiss. My Jace.
Before we left, I took one last look around the house. The entranceway had a big watercolor of a bird feeding her baby chicks that I painted freshman year. The living room was cozy with a fireplace that wafted a smoky wood scent through the air. This mingled with the fragrance of the pine tree that Mom decorated so beautifully for Christmas. Mom and Dad sat on the couch, Dad reading from his tablet. I got kind of a lump in my throat when I looked at them. I had no idea it would be the last time I'd see them.
“Remember, I’m staying over at Colette’s house tonight,” I reminded Mom.
“That’s fine, dear. Just don’t drink and drive.”
“Thanks, Mom. I won’t.” My parents trusted me. I was bizarrely good, getting good grades, doing everything I was supposed to. I had a small tinge of guilt because that night I was going to betray their trust. Jace and I had planned it.
The novel begins with Ari as she heads out with her boyfriend Jace to a costume party. Later, Jace and Ari depart the party and head to a cabin in the mountains to spend the night together. The two of them fall asleep in front of a wood fire. Then Ari's world as she knows it comes crashing down. When she wakes, she is enclosed in a coffin. A man wearing Jace's costume party mask opens the coffin, inserts a syringe into Ari and administers a drug.
At this point, Ari experiences a new world. She believes she has been murdered. She meets Saranya who indicates that Ari can return to the life she knew if she goes back and cohabitates the body of another person with the intension of reforming him/her. Ari accepts the task and returns to earth in a man's body. We learn that this man is responsible for torturing and murdering women. We follow along as Ari tries to influence the man she is inhabiting in a positive way with the hope that she can return to her prior life.
Through the story, we go through a roller coaster of emotions. We are horrified as we witness the cruelty of the man when he stalks and kills women. However, when Ari is able to influence him to help an injured stray cat, our hope is restored that Ari may be able to reform the man and return to her previous life.
Overall, the story is intriguing, but there are times when it seems to bog down. Early in the novel Ari complains too frequently about her experiences as she cohabitates in the body of the man. Her complaints include not being able to experience sleep when the man sleeps, the feeling of being in a heavy body, the experience of the cold showers that the man takes each morning, and the annoying physical exercise routine. Also, in the middle portion of the book, it seems that Ari is making no progress with reforming the man and she just appears to be a spectator stuck in his body. This portion of the plot begins to feel a little laborious. However, interactions with people in Ari's life keep us invested in the story until its conclusion.
The main concern that I have regarding this book is the explicit nature of some of the torture and murder descriptions. For a young adult novel, these chapters seem fairly intense. As such, I would recommend this only for people who are in their late teens.