Imagine feeling so much pain that you would be willing to give up every memory and every person you know to start over - absolutely nothing left behind you and only a new slate to look forward to - providing you live through the process.
Chloe Gunn has everything any young girl should want, yet she wants to die, and just can't bring herself to do it. Instead, she volunteers for an unprecedented medical trial to induce amnesia where the answer seems simple: erase her mind and erase the pain.
Drowning in pain, Chloe begins to sleepwalk through her own life, doing whatever she can to numb the ache. Even when she survives a horrific car crash, her low-spirited view is unrelenting. So, when Chloe discovers an ad for an amnesia-inducing experiment in a medical journal, it shines like a beacon.
And Chloe isn’t alone. Even the young, beautiful, rich and famous actress, Victoria Palmer has become intimately acquainted with the slippery hole of depression – miles across the country – and craves any desperate escape out as well. Will she find it before it becomes too late?
“Think – the novel, The Bell Jar, blended with the movie, Sixth Sense…….an emotional, metaphysical ride down, and up – and where it stops, is in the unforeseen.”
Geoff and Naomi are dead, and they're depressed, but when Geoff's cat Bernie dies as well, they embark on a wild journey to find it in the underworld.
*****
When Geoff dies, alongside his girlfriend Naomi, they end up sharing an apartment in the Underworld as skeletons. But after a few years, Geoff starts suffering a mid-death crisis. What's the purpose of going through the motions as a skeleton if you can't really live? Then he gets word that his cat, Bernie, just died and he can collect him and bring him home! Geoff and Naomi hurry to get Bernie only to discover that, due to a clerical error, their cat has been lost. With the hunt for Bernie giving new purpose to Geoff's un-life, he and Naomi begin a quest to get back their cat. Battling skeleton pirates, climbing the sky ladder and facing off against the villain who took Bernie, Geoff is determined to find his purpose - or die a second time trying!
[[2018 Wattys Winner - The Originals]]
[[word count: 30,000-40,000 words]]