The Worst Perfect Moment was a true epiphany. In the simplest terms, Shivaun Plozza's words made the reality of modern life, all its revelations and disappoints, essential to the meaning of something so basic to us all, happiness and love. Overwhelmingly enjoyed this read.

Thank you to Holiday House / Peachtree / Pixel+Ink | Holiday House and NetGalley for providing an eARC for an honest review.

This was such a cool concept! The trips back kind of came out of nowhere in my opinion but they made sense. It was cool how the book closure tied in to the main character getting closure with her death/relationships. Good chemistry too!

Thank you so much to the publisher, author, and Netgalley for letting me read an ARC of "The Worst Perfect Moment"! I loved this book so much, I always looked forward to picking it up and even ended up giving it five stars. The writing style was one that I felt like I clicked with, as it immediately drew me in, and I thought the author was great at describing places and people in such encapsulating and real ways which I loved. Also, the characters were well developed and it was easy to fall in love with them and feel any emotion they were feeling. The main character especially made me feel like I was 16 again; I think the author did a great job of evoking that. Overall, I really recommend this book, specifically if you like queer YA!

A tender, queer YA coming of age (in the afterlife) paranormal romance that sees a recently deceased teen falling for the angel/guide who's there to help her adjust to her new life after death where she gets to live out her happiest memory at a run down motel. Unique, heartfelt and perfect for fans of authors like Ashley Poston. This was my first book by Shivaun Plozza and I enjoyed it a lot. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

It’s bad enough getting hit by a car and dying at age 16. But it’s much, much worse to discover that heaven looks like a run-down motel in New Jersey, complete with a broken-down mini-golf course and dead-insect-filled swimming pool.

Obviously, Tegan believes a mistake has been made: the angel who greets her, Zelda, tells her that heaven is carefully designed to recreate her happiest moment, and this is not Tegan’s happiest moment. When she files a complaint, Zelda’s manager, Barb, agrees that something isn’t right but can’t decide if Zelda made the mistake or if Tegan was mistakenly fast-tracked to heaven when she should have gone to purgatory first. She decides to give Zelda one month to convince Tegan this is, in fact, her happiest moment; if Zelda isn’t successful, Tegan will spend a few thousand years in purgatory, having her soul cleaned up enough to appreciate the joy heaven has to offer, and Zelda will face consequences for her mistake.

As Zelda takes Tegan on excursions back to her old life, hoping to convince her that the time she spent in the Marybelle Motor Lodge truly was her happiest moment, Tegan must work through a lifetime of abandonments that have convinced her she’s never going to be enough for someone to love. Zelda is determined, however, to help Tegan see how wrong she is.

While technically a love story (though the “we’re-in-love” epiphanies come out of the blue), the novel’s strengths are its quirky premise (reminiscent of The Good Place), Tegan’s healing journey, and the novel’s exploration about what truly constitutes happiness.

Thank you NetGalley, Holiday House, Peachtree, and Pixel+Ink for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are our own.

Will also be posted at https://threeheads.works/category/blog/ya-books/ on June 3, 2024.

digital arc was provided by Netgalley and Holiday House

A perfect book about the meaning of perfection and happiness.

Synopsis
Tegan was dead, that much she knew. And she was supposed to be in her version of heaven, made by an angel named Zelda. But this motel from her living life wasn't in her definition of perfect, so she fought Zelda and the management, demanding to be given a happy and perfect heaven.

What I like
The cover is sooooo pretty! I fell in love from the first sight before I fell in love with Tegan. Reading about Tegan felt like looking into the mirror lol. She's a headstrong and capable character who died too soon and I envy her quick acceptance. What she couldn't accept was the heaven Zelda created for her. The motel depicted one of the worst moments in her life and I could see that, and Zelda's all-knowing but not telling Tegan anything was frustrating even for me.
The characters are perfect. Tegan with her stubborness and Zelda, equally stubborn but with a softer side on her. Not to mention 'Mrs. Chiu'! She stole the scene whenever she was there.
And the conclusion might sound cliche, but that was what Tegan needed to find and know. Brb sheeding some tears.

What I don't like
Did I miss the part where they explained the cause of Tegan's death? And I just wish we could see more of the life of her family now that she departed. Not really some things I don't like, just some wishful thinking.

Final thoughts
The Worst Perfect Moment perfectly captured the imperfect ways to be happy, to be loved, and how to choose the goods amidst the bads in our lives. What a good story.

I LOVED THIS BOOK SO MUCH! it was so incredibly witty and engaging to read.

At first, I was surprisingly hesitant due to the limited (and I mean like very few characters and physical barrier around the motel) setting of the story, but ahhh this book was so clever in how it handled and used that setting. I honestly could probably draw the hotel so well because of the pure amount of descriptions of just how terrible this heaven was.

Actually, I loved the pure bureaucratic approach to heaven. I’m so used to seeing the perfect ideal world depictions that just reading about heaven go through multiple days to make a decision and treating everything like an office was honestly hilarious.

Zelda is my favourite character from the book, she was perfect and was just the opposite of what an ‘angel’ should be but still somehow a perfect angel.

The story itself was heartbreaking and just downright sad but wholesome still (which are always the best stories). Watching Tegan relive her younger years and horrible experiences at the motor lodge on loop was straight up heartbreaking especially when she was thrown back into the bureaucracy of heaven who continued to deny that she even should get a perfect heaven.

Anyways, did i mention this book is hilarious? Perfect internal monologue that Tegan would be experiencing literal purgatory and still have me giggling.

Overall, I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH

Sixteen year old Tegan has recently died and landed in 'heaven' which is supposedly an eternal replica of her happiest memory created by an angel, Zelda. But Tegan doesn't agree with her choice of location being the motel she only has poor memories about. Zelda has one month to convince Tegan that she made no mistake or else both girls could suffer unthinkable consequences.

This was a very sweet book. Learning along with the characters was very fun and I felt quite invested in the plot. I really enjoyed the bickery but heartfelt connection that grew between the two mcs. Kept a humorous tone but delve into some deep emotional trauma.

LORD. So, so beautiful and heartfelt.

will edit a full review soon once I've processed my emotions.

Thank you to Netgalley and Holiday House for the ARC! :>

I love when people have to deal with office politics in the running of an afterlife—comedy fantasy bureaucracy is a top genre for me, so I had high hopes about this. It was a serviceable example in the young adult space, though a bit repetitive, and ultimately I found the plotting and development of the afterlife concept a bit lackluster. The exploration of the main character's background had more depth, and the romance were sweet and well done.

Thank you Netgalley for the review copy!

This book was a refreshing concept to read, but the execution wasn’t really what I expected from it.

Basically, we follow our main character Tegan who recently died and is now in her ‘perfect heaven’, but Zelda, the angel who created her heaven, seems to have gotten it all wrong and brought Tegan to one of her worst memories.

Tegan tries to find a way to undo this and when she goes higher up to get this all sorted, they give her and Zelda a month to either make Tegan accept her heaven or for Tegan to prove there was a mistake.

We follow Tegan on this journey, but I feel like there weren’t a lot of twists or things that surprised me? Okay, she had had a difficult life and had her insecurities, but at most times she really felt like a crybaby. I could see the ending coming from a mile away and nothing really stood out to me.

Zelda was funny, but wasn’t present enough in the book for me, so that was a bummer.

This book is actually a lot like the Midnight Library, but for teens and it really just was an okay book for me.

This book had such a cute cover so I was eager to read it. I thought the premise was unique so I requested it. I would say Teagan is more on the younger side of 16 so this book might appeal more to a middle grade audience. Although some parts of it were interesting it wasn’t my style. The two characters, Teagan and Zelda, were at odds for most of the book making it feel more like two siblings bickering. I wish we got to see more of Tegan’s family. (More of the good at least.) It was still a sweet book with a nice ending but it had some painful moments that were sort of hard to get through.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc.

First I would like to thank the publishers for such an incredible book .

Oh WOW i did not know this book would rip through every single one of my emotions.
I have not read a book for a long time which had me sobbing like a baby ,then have you laugh out loud and make your heart all warm and fuzzy at the same time .

The story itself was so well thought out , a story which really had me captivated , life after death story which the character ends up in the wrong heaven learning so much about the character after death . totally beautiful story in every way .
i also really enjoyed World Building I'm not always a fan of that i do think that Shivaun did a wonderful job and really had my imagination wondering which i thought was wonderful .

The characters Tegan and Zelda were both very strong characters There was a time you could really relate to both and at times i really felt like they both needed a great big hug .

I thought Shivaun writing was wonderfully paced ,it was also beautiful and delicate . so very well paced .

i think this book will be stuck in my head for a very long time or should i say ill be living in the story for a long time .

im giving this a very emotionally charged book 5 stars

Aaaaaa what a lovely book!!! Honestly, I didn't expect to like this book so much, although this is a theme that I really like and would like to see in other books, it's not always very well executed. In fact, one of the highlights is the fact that we are trapped together with the character in this melancholic afterlife, desperate to understand why she is there. I loved the characters, I loved their relationship, a good coming of age (if you can talk about that to dead people), and a delicious read. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review!

A thoughtful story of self-discovery and romance found in the afterlife, The Worst Perfect Moment follows Tegan, a deceased teen who finds herself in a version of heaven she did not expect: a recreation of what she considers one of the bleakest moments of her life. But she's not alone. She's accompanied by Zelda, an angel that studied Tegan's life and crafted a version of heaven based on what she considers to be Tegan's happiest moment. What follows is a desperate search for answers as Tegan tries to understand why she has found herself in such as place, before her fate is sealed forever.

While often providing more questions than answers - Zelda often answers Tegan's questions about what's happening with a simple "Spoilers!" without any indication that we'll ever find out what those spoilers actually are - there's still enough payoff at the end to understand the journey we take to get there. Though some readers may grow tired of the repetitive nature of the plot, where Tegan and Zelda revisit moments in Tegan's life in order to better understand why her heaven is the way it is, their connection is sweet and develops naturally through their adventures together.

With its light-hearted dialogue and comical imagining of the afterlife in a similar realm as The Good Place, it is sure to be a hit for those seeking a relatively low stakes drama that still richly tackles the difficult subject matter of death, forgiveness, and loneliness.

Thank you to NetGalley and Holiday House / Peachtree / Pixel+Ink for this ARC.

You’re dead, you’re 16 and your angel picked the wrong heaven. An intricate, beautiful YA tale of finding out what truly matters.

I received an advance copy from Netgalley for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Tegan Masters is dead. Ripped from life by a texting driver and dumped into her worst memory. Here she is, at a god awful two star motel in New Jersey. The place where she spent the most painful few days of her short life. And she is supposed to be spending eternity here? No. No. No. This can NOT be happening. Suddenly a cute angel named Zelda appears. She is the one that rummaged through Tegan’s memories and picked this one to be her heaven. Zelda must have made a huge mistake, right?

Shivaun Plozza spon an excellent YA tale with this one! It dives deep into teenage angst, family trauma and what it means to love and be loved. I loved the intimate look into Tegan’s psyche. Her journey through her memories is both haunting and spellbinding. She works so hard to keep her bad experiences at bay, but her angel Zelda makes her relive all the worst of them. It’s painful and exciting to watch her wade through her history and learn what true happiness is made of. And the conclusion she comes to is one that not only young adults should hear. It’s truly a universal epiphany.

This might be a YA book, but I, as a woman in her forties, enjoyed it very much as well! To see the world through Tegan’s eyes is captivating (and green 😉). To get a glimpse into what could happen once you’re dead is very interesting. Plozza wrote an option of what might occur that is somehow very believable.

I love that Tegan stands her ground but also slowly opens up to the possibility of actually being at the right heaven after all. The way she challenges the work of the angels is what makes her a very strong young woman that you just have to root for.

The Worst Perfect Moment is a great example of what a YA novel could be. Don’t let that fool you though, because this is a story for every and all ages.

I'm surprised that I haven't seen anybody compares this one to The Good Place. Tegan is dead and fast tracked to heaven. Her heaven as it turned out is a cheap shitty motel where she is supposed to spend eternity because calculations seem to indicate that this is the place of her best memory. Fundamentally the premise is flawed because as a reader you immediatly suspect à twist à la "it was the people there that made it a happy memory" but you are telling me that nobody in the thousand years of heaven has had this problem before? I know, I know it's a story meant to explore the emotional state of Tegan wrapped in a funny setting where you depict heaven as an administration. But still the entire thing bothered me. If you say "this place sucks and spending the eternity there is going to be hell." in your supposedly "heaven" to supposedly "angels" I'd say there should be some reaction, other than Zelda's annoyingness. Zelda, the angel who is in charge of Tegan, is forced to prove her happy memory calculations after Tegan complained.

Scientifically, I disliked the approach Zelda took: you're not supposed to prove a memory is the best by proving a select few are worse. That is not how mathematical demonstrations work. Yes, again, I know this entire thing is about the exploration of a character with a messy past and teenage friendships. However, it didn't work for me. Other reviewers say that Tegan refuse to see it but she does it she just hates the whole process because she refuses to spend her eternity in a shitty motel as she should. But then she has to backtrack to save Zelda who barely deserves to be saved (listen she is an angel and without proper angel worldbuilding it doesn't tell us anything about the ins and outs of angel life and death)

In the end, The Worst Perfect Moment left me more frustrated than anything. I knew what it was going for the themes it wanted to deliver on, the attempts at humor (like the other said, cringy vocabulary) but it left me unfulfilled.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for a review! 😇🪽😵

Ok, wow. Not gonna lie, but this legit moved me, like, I was reading this on the bus trying to hold back tears because I didn't want to cry in public.

There was such a good balance of humour and heart; while some of the characters can be silly, this book is not afraid to confront real issues and lean into the characters' emotional moments. Seriously, this got heavier than I had expected.

I loved how Tegan's narrative arc was handled, like the set-up and her journey with Zelda through her memories leading up to the climax, the pacing and Tegan's emotional journey, everything was so well-executed and felt so realistic. Everything leading up to Tegan's revelation culminates in, well, the Perfect Moment.

Tegan and Zelda's relationship was so sweet and charming, like their dynamic is so fun to read. I loved their banter, which might come across to some as too childish or immature (they call each other stuff like buttface and dickcheese) but I honestly found it so endearing. (Also, I'm in no position to talk; I'm a legal adult and the way I talk IRL is Worse.)

The setting and the world-building reminds me of The Good Place, with the bureaucratic Upper Management, the not-so-perfect afterlife and the cast of quirky characters. But while The Good Place was religiously secular, this afterlife is (surprisingly) Christian-coded, with concepts of Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and capital-G God. Not gonna lie, it kind of bugged me a little to assume that everyone's afterlife would be a Christian one, but as a setting/premise it does work for the story, so I'll let it pass.

All in all, I definitely recommend giving this a read, it will warm your heart and move you to tears and make you laugh. Maybe even all at the same time. 🫶

When I first read the synopsis of this book, I was immediately sold. I naturally gravitate toward stories that center around the afterlife, especially ones that put their own unique spin on it or weave their own interpretations of what that could look like. It’s always so fascinating and there are so many places you can go with that kind of story. With this, I thought it would be much the same, so I was really intrigued to read it for myself. Instantly this book seemed perfect for fans of The Afterlife of Holly Chase and Afterlove.

Unfortunately, this one ended up being a major letdown for me. I think first of all, I expected and wanted this to be more emotional in the same vain as maybe a Nina LaCour novel, having this mix of dreamlike quality and true-to-life emotions, with a writing style that maybe leans more lyrical and melancholy. But for me, this ended up being spun more on the comedic side. You know what it’s like? It’s like one of those movies where there’s a wacky sidekick and the main character has seven days to complete a task or prove some grand thesis like that true love exists, all while the wacky magical sidekick is along for the ride and poofs in every now and then with their antics. Like, it’s very much giving those vibes, which were unfortunately not exactly the vibe that I wanted.

All of that aside, I was actually enjoying the ride. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it was still entertaining enough. But the longer it went on, the more frustrated I ended up getting on Teagan‘s behalf. And here’s where I really have a bone to pick with this plot: I mean, I’m just gonna say it… understand why Teagan is so upset and confused as to why this shitty hotel is supposed to be her eternal heaven. I would be too! Literally no one explains anything to her and just drops her here for her to feel lost and confused as to what’s going on. And then when she understandably questions why this is supposed to be her “happiest” memory and clearly expresses that she doesn’t want to stay here, everyone acts like she’s being so difficult and unreasonable. They’re like “What are you talking about, this is your happiest memory,” again, without giving ANY follow-up as to why. And quite frankly, I agree with Tegan: I’d give Heaven a one-star review too, judging by the way they run things and don’t communicate at all with the recently departed souls who have no idea what’s going on and are given next to no guidance unless it turns into a full-blown bureaucratic investigation. Like, damn, this Heaven is legit run like a DMV, or worse, Spirit Airlines where the customer service sucks and no one actually takes the time to answer your questions but rather makes you feel like you’re the difficult one who’s wasting their time.

It would honestly save so much confusion if this whole “investigation” Zelda takes Tegan on, showing her snapshots throughout her life leading up to where she is in the afterlife, could just be, I dunno…the standard? Like, yeah, why wouldn’t this be considered just a general orientation for each soul, if they so needed it? And they act like Tegan is such a special, difficult case who needs to spend thousands of years in purgatory which…I can’t believe that their biggest challenge is a fifteen-year-old girl with very real struggles she’s been through in life and is expressing pretty reasonable emotions given everything. Like, damn, if you consider her a difficult case…what do you do with everyone else? I just don’t buy this. Like, there’s nothing Teagan is going through that countless other people haven’t also gone through, if not worse. And I also don’t think the answer is being in purgatory thousands of years just for being human and going through our own personal struggles. Because if that’s the case, then almost every departed soul should allegedly be held in purgatory. I just don’t vibe with this belief system. And in Teagan‘s case, why? What has she done to deserve this, to deserve thousands of years of agony, other than…going through ordinary life shit? It seems very extreme and unnecessary

Tegan touches on this in the story as well, so it’s not like it isn’t ever addressed, but I’ll reiterate anyway. Why are all people just alone in their own heavens? That seems like solitary confinement and not conducive to a version of heaven for people to find eternal happiness. It’s literally proven that just having a five minute conversation with Robbie already made Teagan feel so much better and gain so much more clarity than when she was by herself. Wouldn’t that be an indication that souls in heaven should be, I don’t know, brought together to coexist and be able to heal through shared experiences as opposed to being completely isolated from everyone else? And in Robbys case, what good does it do to be separated from the love of his life, leaving him to wait in agony for her for all eternity? What good does that do to him? How is that heaven? In what universe is that eternal happiness? Because that actually sounds like punishment. Also why does it literally take until Tegan to start questioning these things? Are you really telling me that no one else has ever thought to question how corrupt and backwards this system is? How did it literally take a 15-year-old girl to Make them question their business practices? I’m just not buying it.

In summary: The logistics of this version of heaven and this story pissed me off so much. It was such an unnecessary waste of time. This is why heaven gets a one star review from me. Because this is some bureaucratic, bullshit dystopian version of heaven. Besides all of that, I still didn’t think the payoff was good enough in the end. As said earlier, Zelda as a character comes across as just a wacky sidekick. I found her just really annoying and cartoonish, so I just couldn’t get on board with her being a love interest. Thus, by the end I couldn’t bring myself to care about the ending.

Other Issues:

* Not gonna lie, the repetition of Tegan addressing Ms. Chiu gets old after a while. And for how often she’s referenced in here, she actually doesn’t take up a large space in the story at all to justify why Teagan keeps referencing her. Like, I get it, I understand her significance and why she means so much to Teagan. But it just isn’t explored enough in the story other than a few lines at best.

* This book is terribly guilty of constantly repeating the same words over and over and trying to get the same laugh (dickcheese, buttface.) It just comes across as particularly juvenile and lackluster writing.

The premise of this book really intrigued me. A dead girl stuck in a crappy motel in New Jersey? Ah, yes please! This is just the kind of quirky, unique, weird and wonderful book I'm down for! The book really hooked me at the start. I loved the premise and found myself really wanting the same answers as our protagonist!

While this book was really heart-achingly beautiful in many ways and very healing in others, the writing style was simple and at times felt more middle grade than YA to me. The romance was very minimal as well.

A really interesting, unique and emotionally affirming read that I would recommend for younger YA readers.

Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC.