His latest prisoners include Nick and Lief. He captains a ship on which hundreds of Afterlights are his prisoners he has been accumulating prisoners for the last thirty years. She sees that The McGill is a terrible monster, in action and appearance. Allie learns that she is a “Skinjacker”-she can take possession of any human body, or “jack” a human’s body. At fifteen, Hightower is the oldest person in Everlost Allie and Nick learn that adults almost never appear in Everlost because they are old enough to have a concrete view of the world and know where they are heading in the afterlife. Allie and Nick are surprised to see the World Trade Center in Everlost, but Hightower tells them that things that were immensely loved in the real world tend to transfer to Everlost when they are met with destruction. A prolific writer on Everlost, she lives with her “children” (the incoming Afterlights) in the ruins of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan. In New York, they run into Mary Hightower, an expert on living in Everlost. Before they go, Lief warns them to look out for a monster named The McGill. Allie and Nick plan to return home to New York City.

Lief explains to them about “Afterlights,” which is what they currently are: ghost-like beings who cannot die and cannot remain in the world of the living. They run into Lief (aka Travis), an eleven-year-old boy. Consequently, he is forced to be in formal clothes and have a chocolate stain on his mouth throughout the afterlife. He was eating chocolate and had a stain on his mouth at the time of the accident. Nick, a kind and quiet boy, was in the wedding vehicle. Allie, brave and ambitious, was in a car with her family on the highway when they crashed head-on into a Mercedes that was heading to a wedding. Part one opens with a slow-motion overview of the car crash that kills fourteen-year-old protagonists Nick and Allie. Prominent themes in Everlost include deception, friendship, and mortality. Shusterman, a popular screenwriter, is best known for his 2015 YA novel, Challenger Deep, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

The work is the first in the Skinjacker trilogy, which includes Everwild (2009) and Everfound (2011). Neal Shusterman’s fantasy novel Everlost (2006) follows two teenagers who, after a car crash, are caught in a land between life and death known as Everlost.

Everlost by Neal Shusterman