Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin
Liz Hall awakens to find herself on a cruise ship with no knowledge of how she got there or where she is going. As she wanders the ship, she notices that most of the other passengers are elderly and it is some time before she realizes that she is dead and she is travelling towards the afterlife. I was curious to see how Zevin was going to handle her version of an afterlife and I wasn't disappointed. It turns out that Elsewhere is very much like Earth, with people having homes, driving cars, holding jobs. However, instead of getting older, people grow younger, until finally as babies they are ready to return to Earth to live out a new life. Liz finds it really hard to accept her own death figuring that at the age of fifteen her life was just starting, but gradually makes friends, gets to know her grandmother who died before she was born, and even finds love. This is a really thought-provoking book, about grief, about letting go, and about being alive. Although in the children's department, it is a book that deals with some pretty adult ideas and would fit well in a teen collection.