My Life on Earth and Elsewhere by Peggy Payne

 My Life on Earth and Elsewhere

Peggy Payne

ISBN-13:9781958414071

Publisher: Hydra Publications 

Publication date:05/01/2023

Pages:346

Product dimensions:6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.72(d)

Description

Sensing she’s about to get bad news, Darcy, sixteen, feels herself—or her spirit, to be more exact—rise weightless, out of her body, lifting off the seat of the patio chair. How can this be happening? Her light-bodied airy self hovers high in a backyard tree.

She is not alone! A beautiful teenage boy, shy as a deer, stands in the branches nearby. He sees her and vanishes—as she is pulled back into her body, again tight-packed in her skin.

Her father is talking. Her parents are separating. She’s stunned—the three of them always seemed special, unbreakable. Yet she’s wildly excited by what just happened—though fears she’s lost her family and her mind in the same afternoon.

While her father is in his own religious crisis, she enters an entrancing spirit realm. Must she live a half-life in each of two worlds or must she make an impossible choice? Can the tree boy Risto ever pass as a regular guy? And what becomes of a young spirit being like him? In My Life On Earth and Elsewhere, Darcy has to find a way around barriers present since before the beginning of time.

 Review: My Life on Earth and Elsewhere by Peggy Payne

If you are searching for a teen romance with a supernatural element, I just finished reading this one gifted to me by author Peggy Payne.

As the story unfolds, it depicts the life of Darcy a likable sixteen-year-old that reads romantic poetry and chairs the prom committee. Darcy is hanging out in her room when she is called upon to meet with her parents. She receives some devastating news and the direction things head makes it impossible for her to sleep. 

A spooky book leads her to a mysterious game and the next thing you know she is floating outside herself and has an astral boyfriend, Tree Boy, a.k.a., Risto. 

I am a nature nut and using trees as a conductor made this read utterly compelling. 

It was just Darcy's luck, she falls in love with a spirit who was training to become human. And she is worried people may treat her as they do the lonely, peculiar neighbor Mr. Frederick.

If her life is not complicated enough, Darcy has to deal with Tony and Webb and maybe she'll get lucky and Hawk can help her work through some of her difficult emotions. 

The use of an international treasure built to preserve a memory of a beloved within this novel is demonstrative of Payne's ability to weave fact and fiction together in this entertaining read that fuses fantasy and adventure. 

Venturing into the unknown is frightening! One thing Darcy is sure of is she must help Risto pass as a high school boy, but the more he learns, the sooner he will vanish into a new life as a human.

I could barely put this book down and took comfort in the fact that  Darcy has BFFs Martin and Charlotte whom she can talk about her life on earth and elsewhere.

About the Author

Peggy Payne, a New York Times Notable writer, is the author of novels about the intersecting of spirit and physical worlds. A Duke graduate, she grew up on the North Carolina coast and now lives near Chapel Hill with her psychologist husband, in a log house beside a pond in deep woods