"The Edge of Over There" by Shawn Smucker

I think this book would have been easier to get into if I'd read the book that precedes it, The Day the Angels Fell.  But I haven't.  And I didn't have time to go find and read that one first because I was reading this for the INSPY awards and I was on a deadline.  So the first hundred and fifty pages felt like I'd never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer before, and somebody grabbed a random disc from season 5 of the show and made me watch it by myself, with no friends or internet to fill in background info for me or even explain what in the world was going on.

However.  I did eventually wrap my head around this book's worldbuilding and, by the end, it did make sense.  And I liked it a lot.  More for the writing than the story itself, though I did enjoy the story.  It actually reminded me a lot of Buffy and Angel, which are some of my favorite shows (though, when I started watching Buffy, I had friends to explain stuff to me during the commercial breaks, as I joined the fandom when season 4 was airing).

Basically, there are angelic and demonic beings trying to help and hinder people on earth, and there's a problem with the demonic ones trying to raise trees that will make humans sorta immortal, and there are some semi-immortal humans who created a sort of purgatory world halfway between this earth and eternity.  And some teens have to try to stop them.

Does that make any sense?  Sigh.  I'm really bad at explaining Buffy too.  Can I just say that this book was cool, and I enjoyed it once I got into it?  Smucker has a very lyrical, evocative writing style that I definitely liked.  Oh, and my fellow judges and I chose it as the winner for the YA category for the INSPY Awards this year!

Particularly Good Bits:

We want things to stay the same, but the roads between "now" and "back then" are always changing, and by the time you manage to return home, if you can ever find your winding way, you realize it was never actually yours, not forever (p. 23).

Time stumbles under the weight of deep sadness (p. 68).

"Maybe children are the only ones brave and true enough to save the world" (p. 118).

"Words should only be used as a last resort, a final attempt to communicate when all else has failed.  They are unsteady ground.  Words are nothing more than manipulated air" (p. 150).

Cemeteries are the one place on earth where people can stop talking whenever they want and no one will press them for more.  Which makes sense, since cemeteries hold so much unfinished business (p. 161).

"Stories will do that if we let them.  They'll work their way inside, to the deepest parts, and they'll live there, and they'll change us" (p. 360).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for danger, violence, suspense, and scary imagery.