The book begins when Seth is drowning in the sea. Fighting against the waves, battered against the rocks, he hits his head and dies. And then he wakes up, far from the ocean, at what he belatedly realizes is a version of his childhood home. The book is purposefully confusing at first – Is this the afterlife? Is it a simulation? A story? But as Seth feels his way through this newly strange environment, beset by occasional vivid flashbacks to his past, we start to form a theory of what happened to create the world that he’s in now. Love the side characters that appear in Seth’s new present, especially the character of Tomasz who combines snarky insight with vulnerability. It’s very existentialist for a YA novel, thoughtful while still action-packed, and I quite liked it by the end.