Layoverland

November 11, 2019
Sarcastic 17-year-old Bea’s “glass-half-empty” views have made everyone in her life an enemy, save for her little sister Emmy—her best friend. When Bea is killed in a head-on collision after a terrible fight with Emmy, she is dismayed to discover she is trapped in a layover for “mostly good people who are harboring secrets, fatal mistakes, and/or emotional hang-ups.” Folks in this purgatory must work out, by exploring their past memories, what is keeping the soul from self-realization and ascension. Bea, assigned to atone via the Memory Experience Department, must help 5,000 souls to heaven before moving on herself. When she is paired to help Caleb, the (cute) boy who caused both their deaths, she plots to hold him back. But between Caleb and her new roommate Jenna, Bea comes to learn that maybe not everyone is an enemy. Interspersing Bea and Emmy’s fight throughout the story, Noone seamlessly crafts her The Good Place–esque tale with spot-on details, such as how the dead appear exactly as they perished (makeup and all) forever. While Bea’s story is set entirely in Layoverland, her journey to letting down her defenses in order to accept love moves beyond it. Ages 14–up. Agent: Dana Murphy, the Book Group.

November 1, 2019
Coming-of-age can happen even when you're dead and bitter. Bea Fox dies in a car accident while crying about a fight with her sister (who is also her best friend), listening to a song she hates, and wearing jeans she doesn't like. She wakes up in an airplane heading to Layoverland, an in-limbo place for heaven-bound souls with emotional baggage or secrets to clean up before they can depart for the Pearly Gates. Bitter, pessimistic, argumentative Bea is recruited into the Memory Experience Department and can't move on until she helps a certain number of befuddled souls clear their minds (including a guy who is supercute--and responsible for her death. Awkward). And who knew that orange would be the go-to palette for the in-between afterlife? Bea is a terrific antihero, as if the naysaying comic relief in a teen movie got the spotlight instead of the pretty ingenue. But her acid tongue and eye rolls aren't two-dimensional or one-note; layers to her pre-Layoverland life are interspersed to give depth. The fantasy and comedy make the narrative buoyant even while bullying, tragic deaths, class struggles, and reproductive rights are faced head-on. Bea and her family are white and working class, and the majority of the cast also seems to be white save for biracial (Mexican/white) love interest Caleb and brown-skinned Layoverland mentor Sadie. A story about death that leans toward the light. (Fiction. 13-17)

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December 1, 2019

Gr 7-10-Bea is ugly crying about ruining her sister's life when a huge SUV crosses into her lane. She makes eye contact with the other driver and realizes she knows him from school, then wakes up on a plane with that boy and a variety of other passengers. No one seems to know where the plane is headed, but it soon arrives in an airport where someone is holding a sign with Bea's name on it like they were expecting her. She comes to find out that moment in the car was her last second of life before both drivers died in a head-on collision. They have landed in an in-between place where people are sent to redeem themselves and earn their place in Heaven. Bea hasn't ever given much thought to what happens when you die; now, she is stuck in this airport until she can resolve her issues. With the help of Sadie, her sign-holding friend, Bea learns that she has been assigned to help 5,000 souls discover the one memory that is keeping them from Heaven, then she can join them. All of the people in the airport are given a passport and a lottery number to determine when they get their opportunity to move up. The boy from the crash has no idea that he is responsible for Bea being here, but she is going to make him earn each and every second in Layoverland because she wasn't ready to die. This is a cute read about one conception of the afterlife that is resonant of Gabrielle Zevin's Elsewhere and Wendy Mass's Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall. Do the actions in our daily life and the way we treat others affect our place in the next? VERDICT A lighthearted book about finding oneself and personal redemption.-Jessica Lorentz Smith, Bend Senior High School, OR

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2019
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Bea wasn't expecting to die. Certainly not in a car crash after a terrible fight with her sister, who's also her best friend (make that only friend). But when her plane lands at a tacky airport, she's informed she's in purgatory, and, before she can move on to heaven, she must help 5,000 souls figure out what's stopping their upward progress. She's been chosen for the job, her trainer tells her, because her sharpness at spotting others' weaknesses and her ability to manipulate are pluses for those who'll be facilitating at the memory unit. Bea balks; she's a hater, not a helper, but hell is the only other option. If this is beginning to sound like the tv show The Good Place, the similarities are strong. But debut author Noone has created a clever purgatory that contains its own special annoyances (home is a cheap airport motel room, all food is encased in Jell-O) and fresh, funny characters with rich responses to being in the medium place. Alternating with the scenes at the airport are Bea's flashbacks to her death day, with her flaws and faults on full display. But wait, there's also romance! And it's a rich one: Bea learns her crush-worthy patient is the boy who killed her in the crash. Plenty of laughs here, mixed deftly with meditations on what it means to be alive.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)