Five teens are caught in a continuous time loop where they are forced to choose who lives and who dies in this absorbing psychological thriller f rom the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Special Topics in Calamity Physics and Night Film. "Beautifully creepy." -- The New York Times "You won't be able to stop reading." -- Refinery29 "Dark and twisty." -- Bustle Five friends. Only one can survive. Who would you choose? It's been one year since graduation, and Beatrice Hartley has mixed feelings about joining her friends a weekend reunion. She's right to be worried. After a night out, they narrowly avoid a collision with a car on a deserted road. Or so they believe... Back at the mansion where they are staying, a mysterious man knocks on the door during a raging storm. He tells them that they must make a choice: one of them will live, and the rest will die. And the decision must be unanimous. Soon time backbends. Beatrice and her friends are forced to repeat that dreadful day so many times they lose count. With each replay, events twist and fears come alive in horrifying ways. To escape, they have to vote. But how do you choose who to kill? And then how do you live with yourself? This nightmare, this nothingness . . . this is the Neverworld Wake. From critically acclaimed, literary sensation, Marisha Pessl, comes a spellbinding story that is "the kind of book you'll tear through and then want to talk about with everyone you know." ( Nylon). A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year   " Neverworld Wake is a shape-shifting binge read . . . It's a 'clear your calendar' kind of one-day read ." --Melissa Albert, New York Times bestselling author of The Hazel World "An altogether eerie, philosophically challenging exploration of the ways in which our actions have consequences . . . the kind of book you'll tear through and then want to talk about with everyone you know immediately after finishing." -- Nylon "The first must-read of beach season." -- Town & Country ★ " Sophisticated ."—VOYA , starred review "Pessl ( Special Topics in Calamity Physics ) adeptly creates a compelling nightmare world while maintaining a foothold in realism. Thought-provoking and suspenseful ." -- PW "Unpredictable, exciting, and emotionally wrenching ." -- SLJ "An eloquent and haunting tale." -- Kirkus Reviews "Odd, atmospheric ." -- Booklist   “A dark and twisty tale brimming with psychological suspense .” —Bustle Marisha Pessl  is the author of Night Film and  Special Topics in Calamity Physics,  which won the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize (now the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize) and was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review . Pessl grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and currently resides in New York City. I hadn’t spoken to Whitley Lansing--or any of them--in over a year.   When her text arrived after my last final, it felt inevitable, like a comet tearing through the night sky, hinting of fate.    Too long. WTF. #notcool. Sorry. My Tourette’s again. How was your freshman year? Amazing? Awful?   Seriously. We miss you.   Breaking the silence bc the gang is heading to Wincroft for my bday. The Linda will be in Mallorca & ESS Burt is getting married in St. Bart’s for the 3rd time. (Vegan yogi.) So it’s ours for the weekend. Like yesteryear.   Can you come? What do you say Bumblebee?   Carpe noctem.       Seize the night.   She was the only girl I knew who surveyed everybody like a leather-clad Dior model and rattled off Latin like it was her native language.   “How was your exam?” my mom asked when she picked me up.   “I confused Socrates with Plato and ran out of time during the essay,” I said, pulling on my seat belt.   “I’m sure you did great.” She smiled, a careful look. “Anything else we need to do?”   I shook my head.   My dad and I had already cleared out my dorm room. I’d returned my textbooks to the student union to get the 30 percent off for next year. My roommate had been a girl from New Haven named Casey who’d gone home to see her boyfriend every weekend. I’d barely seen her since orientation.   The end of my freshman year at Emerson College had just come and gone with the indifferent silence usually reserved for a going-out-of-business sale at a mini-mall.   “Something dark’s a-brewin’,” Jim would have told me.           I had no plans all summer, except to work alongside my parents at the Captain’s Crow.   The Captain’s Crow--the Crow, it’s called by locals--is the seaside cafe and ice cream parlor my family owns in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, the tiny coastal village where I grew up.   Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Population: You Know Everyone.   My great-grandfather Burn Hartley opened the parlor in 1885, when Watch Hill was little more than a craggy hamlet where whaling captains came to shake off their sea legs and hold their children for the first time before taking off again