I Woke Up Dead at the Mall

by Judy Sheehan

Overview

For fans of The Good Place, a contemporary YA novel with an offbeat supernatural twist, tackling some of life's – and the afterlife’s – biggest questions. When Sarah wakes up dead at the Mall of America, where the universe sends teens who are murdered, she learns that not only is she dead, her killer is still on the loose. Can she solve the mystery of her own demise?
  
When you’re sixteen, you have your whole life ahead of you. Unless you’re Sarah. Not to give anything away, but . . . she’s dead. Murdered, in fact. Sarah’s murder is shocking because she couldn’t be any more average. No enemies. No risky behavior. She’s just the girl on the sidelines.

It looks like her afterlife, on the other hand, will be pretty exciting. Sarah has woken up dead at the Mall of America and with the help of her death coach, she must learn to move on or she could meet a fate totally worse than death: becoming a mall walker.

As she tries to finish her unfinished business alongside her fellow dead teens, Sarah falls hard for a cute boy named Nick. And she discovers an uncanny ability to haunt the living. While she has no idea who killed her, or why, someone she loves is in grave danger. Sarah can’t lose focus or she’ll be doomed to relive her final moments again and again forever. But can she live with herself if she doesn’t make her death matter?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780553512496
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	04/25/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	1,158,417
Product dimensions:	5.56(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.65(d)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Judy Sheehan is one of the original cast members and creators of the long-running stage hit Tony ’n’ Tina’s Wedding. She was the playwright-in-residence at New York City’s prestigious Looking Glass Theatre and has had plays produced there and at regional theaters around the country. She lives in New York City, which is sort of like living in a giant mall.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "I Woke Up Dead at the Mall"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Judy Sheehan.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Children's Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

★ “This sparkling debut pulls out all the stops: sweet, sad, hopeful, funny, and romantic in turn, it’s a story bound to make readers laugh even as they cry.” —Booklist starred review

"A feel-good novel about being dead? Only in this quirky, even romantic story."—Kirkus

"Humorous and offbeat."—School Library Journal

From the Publisher

02/01/2016
Gr 9 Up—Sixteen-year-old New Yorker Sarah Evans is shocked when she wakes up dead. At the Mall of America. In Minnesota. Wearing the mango chiffon bridesmaid gown she had on when she died. Along with fellow teen murder victims Harry (cancer, although that isn't technically what killed him), Lacey (pushed off a roof), Alice (she doesn't want to talk about it), and the oh-so-dreamy Nick (gunshot to the chest), Sarah is supposed to use her time at the mall to prepare to move on. The only problem is that Sarah can't believe anyone would want to murder her when she spent her entire (short) life determined to be ordinary. Sarah also knows without a doubt that her father is in danger and she's the only one who can save him—even if interfering with the living is against the rules, according to her annoyingly chipper "death coach," Bertha. In this humorous and offbeat ghost story, Sarah uses her uncanny haunting abilities, along with some help from her new friends, to make sense of her afterlife and save the day. Sarah's snark-filled first-person narration meshes well with the madcap quality of this story. This novel sidesteps religion by presenting the Boy (aka "Boss of You") as the ultimate authority figure in the afterlife while also keeping things like angels separate from any faith-based interpretations. Unfortunately these seemingly arbitrary alternatives also provide little in the way of world-building for the fantasy elements. Pop culture references, including a years too late cameo by Oprah Winfrey, lend a dated and out-of-touch quality to this otherwise strong plot. One-note characters with vague motivations further diminish the overall impact of this novel. VERDICT Sheehan's quirky vision of the afterlife ultimately leads to a meandering plot with a mixed bag of plot points and an ending that ties things up with a too neat bow.—Emma Carbone, Brooklyn Public Library

School Library Journal

2015-12-22
A feel-good novel about being dead? Only in this quirky, even romantic story. Sarah Evans would never be caught dead in mango, until, well, she wakes up dead in a mango chiffon dress at Minnesota's Mall of America. The 16-year-old New Yorker, the victim of food poisoning intended for her wealthy father, finds herself among other teens, all murdered, from New York City. They become stuck at the mall while they take care of unfinished business in the living world and reconcile their feelings for their new state of being. Unlike her fellow humans (alive or dead), Sarah has a gift, called the Knowing, which allows her to foresee unfortunate events in the future. While she wasn't able to stop her own mother's death, she may be able to thwart her new, greedy stepmother's attempt to kill her father. But she'll need the help of her fellow mall-mates. Although time and socio-economics would have prevented many of them from knowing one another, they become fast friends. Sarah's conversational, quick-paced, first-person narrative, full of "deadly" puns and idioms, recounts how she and her new BFFs (even in death?) work together. And when Sarah finds love in the process, she realizes she's only learned how to live by being dead. Sure, the plot is inconceivable, but isn't life? And death? (Fantasy. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews