The Wanderer

This is a teenage romance with a difference. Ryder seems destined to wander the world he left behind, but as an invisible soul, after he chose not to follow the light when he died in a boating accident five years ago. After becoming increasingly intrigued and captivated by Maggie, a 15-year-old girl he first ‘met’ at the hospital, he breaks the Wanderers’ rules in order to save her life, when she walks into the path of a bus. Once Ryder has made this initial contact, he finds the idea of not doing it again hard to give up, even though he knows that what he is doing is wrong and that it’s unlikely to end well.

Maggie has already not had the easiest start to her life. Her mother died of cancer when she was younger and her father has never been around, leaving her to be brought up by her elderly grandmother. When she is affected by Alzheimer’s and taken into a nursing home, Maggie becomes part of the social care system, refusing to get too attached to any of her foster families as, after all, ‘who wants a 15-year-old child?’

My heart ached for poor Maggie, struggling to negotiate the already tricky teenage school years, without a support network of family and friends. I couldn’t see how the story could end happily for either of them, nor how Maggie would cope when she learned the truth about her new love interest, but I don’t mind admitting that the sudden twist at the end had me both in tears and with a warm and fuzzy glow. If you’ve ever wondered what might happen when you die, then this lovely YA novel offers an interesting and credible theory. Maggie and Ryder’s story, while potentially doomed from the start, is a thought provoking and warm love story spanning the normal boundaries of the universe. This is the debut novel from author Josie Williams and I will certainly look out for more work from her in the future.