My Life On Earth And Elsewhere

Cleverly plotted and mesmerizing read for fans of YA Paranormal and lovers of Fantasy, My Life On Earth And Elsewhere by Peggy Payne, follows sixteen-year-old Darcy who suddenly has an out-of-body experience at a most critical moment of her life. She has always believed that the bond that binds her family — father, mother, and daughter — is far stronger than anything can break. But divorce is about to end what she has thus far considered normal, and with it, something else is happening to her. It begins when her spirit rises out of her body and hovers high above the tree in the backyard. It is then that she sees a handsome teenage boy who, for a moment, stands in the branches, then disappears. Her life is torn between this world and the spirit realm. Can she choose to belong to one or embrace both?

The opening grabs the attention of the ready instantly as Darcy recounts her experience in the first-person narrative voice and in the present tense, a style that creates a strong sense of intimacy, pulling the reader into her inner world and offering a wonderful scape of her mind: ''Floating up, away from myself, away from my body. So easy, it’s the softest feeling. Light and swimming in the air. I’d forgotten I could do anything like this.'' The conflict is the work of a rich imagination and it is intelligently handled, from Darcy's experience of divorce to her father's personal crisis, from her quest to understand her own intimate experiences to her feelings for the strange boy, and being torn between two worlds grounds the tension that moves this story forward. The young female protagonist is stunned at an unusual experience and her exploration of this gift becomes a central theme in Payne’s engrossing narrative. This novel stands out in its originality and while it explores an out-of-body experience, it features characters that are vividly drawn, crisis that are human, and a world that is real and richly imagined. The emotions are written in detail and the prose, mostly lyrical, has an irresistible spell that has readers cuffed and compelled to follow the story until its exciting, surprising denouement. My Life On Earth And Elsewhere is an original, deftly plotted, and balanced paranormal tale that is as gripping as any can be.  Peggy Payne succeeds to offer readers a dream experience that lasts as long as they follow her characters.