Is More Than This Worth Reading?
by Patrick Ness
Ada’s Score
Patrick Ness's 2013 novel begins with a teenage boy drowning and waking up — alone, starving, in the ruined English town where he grew up — in what may be a version of the afterlife, a simulation, or something else entirely. Ness constructs a philosophical mystery that interrogates the nature of consciousness, regret, and whether the stories we tell ourselves are the only reality we have access to. The book is more daring and thematically ambitious than most adult literary fiction. Ness is unafraid of big questions and this may be his most existentially bold work.
YA Deep Dive“Ness at his most fearless. Asks questions most adult novels don't dare to and earns every one of them.”
What Comes After Drowning
Patrick Ness does something extraordinary here — he takes the existential dread that keeps philosophers up at night and makes it urgent, personal, and deeply relevant to anyone who's ever wondered if this is all there is. I found myself underlining passages not because they were beautiful, though many are, but because they articulated questions I didn't know I was carrying. If you're ready for YA that trusts its readers with the big, uncomfortable questions, this one will stay with you.
Ada Brief
AI reading intelligence“Ness at his most fearless. Asks questions most adult novels don't dare to and earns every one of them.”
What Comes After Drowning
Patrick Ness does something extraordinary here — he takes the existential dread that keeps philosophers up at night and makes it urgent, personal, and deeply relevant to anyone who's ever wondered if this is all there is. I found myself underlining passages not because they were beautiful, though many are, but because they articulated questions I didn't know I was carrying. If you're ready for YA that trusts its readers with the big, uncomfortable questions, this one will stay with you.
Book Details
- Publisher
- Candlewick
- Published
- January 1, 2014
- Pages
- 480
- Language
- English
Get This Book
Affiliate linksISBN: 9780763676209
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Ada’s Score Breakdown
4.4
This breakdown reflects how Ada weighs the book’s strengths and flaws, not aggregated reader data.
Common Questions About More Than This
- Is More Than This worth reading?
- Ness at his most fearless. Asks questions most adult novels don't dare to and earns every one of them. Ada rates it 4.4 out of 5.
- How many pages is More Than This?
- More Than This is 480 pages long — around 8–9 hours at an average reading pace.
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