Publishers Weekly
11/11/2019
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. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
Praise for Layoverland
★ "Plenty of laughs here, mixed deftly with meditations on what it means to be alive." —Booklist, starred review
"Bea is a terrific antihero, as if the naysaying comic relief in a teen movie got the spotlight instead of the pretty ingenue." —Kirkus Reviews
"While Bea’s story is set entirely in Layoverland, her journey to letting down her defenses in order to accept love moves beyond it." —Publishers Weekly
"Likable characters, a fully developed setting, and some witty banter and dialogue are the highlights of this novel." —School Library Connection
"A lighthearted book about finding oneself and personal redemption." —School Library Journal
"The romance with Caleb is sweet, but it’s this sibling relationship that gives Bea her depth, and her side-eying and hilariously biting comebacks are tempered by her real grief and loss." —BCCB
"Layoverland is perfectly Gabby Noonehilarious, sharp, and smart, with a gooey warmth hiding inside. It's a delightful book, and the brilliant beginning to what is sure to be an illustrious career." —Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers
"A cheeky take on the afterlife brimming with sass, angst, and heart." —Christine Riccio, New York Times bestselling author of Again, but Better.
"Clever, charming, and unputdownable. A modern romantic comedy that's both timely and timeless." —Robyn Schneider, bestselling author of The Beginning of Everything
"It's a testament to Noone's skills that a story that's sad and heartbreaking and all about death is also funny and inventive and wonderfully alive. Bea is the kind of smart and flawed character that you just want to hug, even if she's a bit prickly around the edges. I loved her colorful Tim Burton-esque world." —Goldy Moldavsky, New York Times bestselling author of Kill the Boy Band and No Good Deed
Indies Introduce Selection
Junior Library Guild Selection
School Library Journal
12/01/2019
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
Kirkus Reviews
2019-10-13
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)