Elizabeth Hall was a normal teenager until she gets hit by a taxi and dies. She then goes to the afterlife called Elsewhere. At first Elizabeth is very confused with her new life, but then she sees that she will not be able to get out of Elsewhere for a long time. From there, she knows that she will have to get used to her new home.


The book Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin had a lot of literary merits. The two main literary merits were suspense and setting.


When Gabrielle Zevin wrote this book she put a lot of suspenseful parts into it. When Elizabeth first arrives at Elsewhere she wants to make contact, but that is illegal. When she did I was not sure if she would go to jail after. Another suspenseful part is when she wanted to go back to Earth, but she wasn’t a baby yet. I didn’t know if her friends and family would stop her or if she would make the trip back to Earth.


Another literary merit is setting. The author described Elsewhere so well it was like we were part of that place. I could imagine myself with Elizabeth each time I opened the book. Each place was described with full detail. For example, “... a wooden boardwalk, gray with water and time, joins the red lighthouse tenuously to the land” (Zevin, 88).


This book was one of the best books I have ever read because at some points I couldn’t even put the book down. I would recommend it to teens wanting a good read.