This is Not the End by Chandler Baker (Website, Twitter, Goodreads)Published by Disney Electronic Content on August 8th 2017
Genres: Death & Dying, General, Romance, Science & Technology, Social Themes, Young Adult Fiction
Pages: 327
I wonder if for the rest of my life, I’ll be haunted by beautiful days.
On one cloudless, radiant summer afternoon, Lake Devereaux lost everything. The car crash claimed the lives of her best friend and boyfriend, the people who had become her family after her own fell apart. But she doesn’t have to lose them both.
The development of resurrection technology has changed the world. Under the new laws regulating the process, each person gets one resurrection to be used or forfeited on their eighteenth birthday. Mere weeks away from turning eighteen, Lake faces an impossible choice.
Envisioning life without one of the people she loves most is shattering enough, but Lake carries an additional burden: years ago, under family pressure, Lake secretly—and illegally—promised her resurrection to someone who isn’t even dead yet.
The search for answers about her future draws Lake more deeply into the secrets of her past until she begins to question everything about those closest to her. Betrayals and hurts both new and old threaten to eclipse the memories she once cherished.
Then Lake meets a boy unlike anyone she’s encountered before, who unflinchingly embraces the darkest parts of her life . . . and who believes that all resurrections are wrong.
Which path is the right one? And how can Lake start to heal when she can't move on?
I’m not sure how you would categorize this novel… it has a very contemporary feel with a dash of sci-fi mixed in. The setting is somewhat vague… you don’t know the exact time period… is it an alternate current world, further in the future… I don’t know, though I’m not entirely sure that’s super important. What is important though is that resurrection technology is now available and there are people on both sides of the fence of the ethics of it.
To regulate this technology, laws have been passed that state each person gets one resurrection on their eighteenth birthday. They either can use it then or forfeit it forever.
Lake Devereaux will be eighteen in just a couple of weeks, and her resurrection choice has been already promised… but then the unthinkable happens, both her best friend Penny and her boyfriend Will are killed in a car accident and Lake is the only survivor. Suddenly she has to decide if she keeps her promise, or reneges and brings back one of the people she loves most in this world.
As the days disappear Lake searches for answers on who she is supposed to pick, and as she digs more and more into her past, she realizes that maybe her life isn’t exactly as it has appeared.
I am slightly torn on my feelings about this book. On one hand, it was incredibly interesting and intriguing. I found myself very interested in what choice ultimately Lake was going to make, but I also felt like the story dragged a bit and the pacing felt a bit off. The story is told in present and past chapters, noted by the number of days before her 18th birthday, and the jumping back and forth made sense, but it also gave me a lot of clues that had me figuring out the ‘hook’ way before I got to the reveal.
Let’s talk characters. Lake is interesting for sure… and I found that I really liked Ringo… but we only get a snippet of Will and Penny when they are alive, and the rest is told in flashbacks from Lake’s perspective and I think I wanted more in the way of the how and the why they were who they were when the accident happens. (sorry that’s so vague, I really am trying not to spoil this!)
And Lake’s brother Matt – lord, I hated him from the beginning, but again, he’s not who he is without reason but I think that really colored my vision of him, so who we see at the end was just so jarring and almost unreal compared to him throughout. Let’s just say his attitude made sense to me when everything is revealed.
Let’s talk romance… there is one, though I felt it was completely unnecessary and somewhat out of place. It almost didn’t make sense to me considering the strong feelings she had for her boyfriend who had just died. It just kind of threw me a bit and I really just wish things had remained platonic… not every book needs to have romance to be successful.
Overall, an interesting read and I really like what Baker did here. I like her style of storytelling and I like the characters she has created so I’ll definitely be looking for more from her in the future. If you like books that deal with ethical dilemmas and the possible issues that arise around them, give this one a try- plus it’s got that twist in the end that you might not see coming!
Thank you to the publisher for an early copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.
About Chandler Baker
Chandler Baker got her start ghostwriting novels for teens and tweens, including installments in a book series that has sold more than 1 million copies. She grew up in Florida, went to college at the University of Pennsylvania and studied law at the University of Texas. She now lives in Austin with her husband. Although she loves spinning tales with a touch of horror, she is a much bigger scaredy-cat than her stories would lead you to believe.
You can find Chandler as the books contributor on the YouTube channel Weird Girls.
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