The Worlds We Leave Behind

Product Information

And that was when I really felt that this was the lesson to be learned from what took place. Life with it's infinite do-overs will still make you lose what you hold dear - if you don't learn to live with the feelings and moments that shape who you are. 🥺 Bestselling author Alexandra Christo, author of TikTok sensation To Kill a Kingdom, introduces her new book, The Night Hunt (Hot Key Books), a dark... When Hex’s best friend Tommo wakes up the next day, he is in a completely different world but he only has murmurs of memories of the world before. Moments of deja vu that feel like Tommo’s lived this day before. But I’ll try to vaguely review it here, as just about everything that I want to say could be considered a spoiler. The biggest feeling I had while reading was one of tension. There’s something constantly bubbling underneath the surface and you’re never quite sure what it is. And that tension keeps building towards a climax, but it doesn’t ever seem to reach it. I’m left with more questions at the end than I have answers. Amanda and Clay and their two teenagers, Archie and Rose are off to a much needed vacation at an Airbnb on Long Island. The house is beautiful. Very secluded. Amazing. A fully loaded dream home!

I loved this book. The authors have written short but informative, provocative, and amazingly readable chapters on a wide range of issues, concepts and strategies that help us think about how we might create a more sustainable and just future. The format is brilliant!" Alam is so smart here, keeping the focus on this family, the "intruders," and the house itself. But every so often just slipping in a tiny bit of what is happening outside of this small setting. Just enough so that we realize our characters are in deeper than they know, to raise the stakes and have us even more troubled than they are. It builds this sense of urgency. Horrible things are happening, they must be happening, even if we are not sure exactly what they are, but here are Amanda and Clay staying up late, speculating, heating up leftovers and drinking vodka. Remember how we all said that the thing so many apocalypse novels got wrong about it is how boring it is? This book gets it. It gets the intricacies of the day, how they continue on, how we downplay and rationalize and insist that everything is fine. How when we do feel threatened we don't know how to respond, how when the crisis is no longer something you can ignore you can lose all sense of propriety.A compelling, original story that follows parallel events affecting interconnected children that explores themes around friendship and betrayal, and the consequences of revenge and retribution and finding the strength to forgive and seek redemption. There is, in fact, a lot going on in the world that these 6 people are unaware of...as all WiFi stops, televisions stop working, and phones have no way to connect to the outside world. Hex never meant for the girl to follow him and his friend Tommo into the woods. He never meant for her to fall off the rope swing and break her arm. When the finger of blame is pointed at him, Hex runs deep into the woods and his fierce sense of injustice leads him to a strange clearing in the woods—a clearing that has never been there before—where an old lady in a cottage offers him a deal. She’ll rid the world of those who wronged him and Hex can carry on his life with them all forgotten and as if nothing ever happened. But what Hex doesn’t know is someone else has been offered the same deal. An interesting and provocative plot wasted over nonsensical, absurd writing. I could probably write a proper review, but I could also just copy-paste Merriam Webster’s definition of “pretentious” and call it a day (fret not though, for I shall provide you with evidence further down):

There's a lot of mystery around what this book is exactly about. Everyone is being deliberately vague and after having read it myself, I can now say that is the right approach. I finished this over the weekend and ever since then, I’ve been trying to think of how many other books made me feel this way. Not many, that’s for sure. This is a book you have to deliberately read (and go blind into) and allow yourself to absorb carefully. I think one of the most genius things about it, is that everyone will have their own reaction and response to it. The reason being is that fear is unique. We aren’t all afraid of the same things for the same reasons. Alam takes that knowledge and puts that on display perfectly. He moves the walls of the room closer and closer and closer until you can only hear the sounds of your own heart beating faster and faster and faster. This book is brilliant and while I know it won’t be a favorite for everyone, it’s a book that asks you a very personal question. What do you become when you’re ability to obtain knowledge disappears???I'm so torn over how I feel about this book. This definitely felt more literary fiction than thriller to me, which I wasn't expecting after reading the description of this book, I guess I was expecting something with a little more action in the story. But this book is definitely more of a slow burn, but there are some true moments of tension between these characters in this book that I really enjoyed. I listened to the audiobook for this one while reading along simultaneously, and I'm kind of glad I did because I don't know if I would've gotten through this book without the audiobook. The writing is a choice.. I thought it was a little over-descriptive in parts, and some scenes were written in a very sexual way, which made it kind of awkward to listen to on audio at times. There wasn't anything truly wrong with The Worlds We Leave Behind, only that it felt, to me, like the first draft of a greater project. I didn't really get to know the characters - all the boys were much the same to me. According to the plot, the boys were seemingly interchangeable, which was a bit sad. Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. The Worlds We Leave Behind: This is an incredible book about friendship, family, and memory. The main character, Hex, or Hector, is blamed for causing an accident, whilst playing in the woods, and runs away. He discovers a clearing in the woods, and just as in any fairy tale, a strange cottage, inhabited by a mysterious old lady. She offers him a deal to remove those who wronged him from the world and Hex can continue to live his life as before. Add cigarettes, board games, movies, electricity would be nice, cell phones with power connection, first aid, household & cleaning supplies... toilet paper, Advil, garbage bags, bleach, duct tape, laundry detergent.. etc.