Name: The World Before Us
ISBN: 9780553418521

Aislinn Hunter

Working as an archivist in an under-funded London museum 20 years after a child left in her charge disappeared, Jane investigates a similar disappearance from more than a century earlier and discovers clues about an enigmatic community. By the award-winning author of What's Left Us.

The World Before Us

Jessica 

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  As a note, a printed galley of this novel was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not effect my opinions in any way.


I’m very conflicted on how I want to approach my review of this little guy because frankly, I have good and bad news and opinions on it. I was intrigued based on the blurb the second I saw it. I was positive that I was going to love The World Before Us by Aislinn Hunter; it was at the top of my most anticipated reads list and I just had this feeling of hope, adoration and excitement.

I know, I know. You shouldn’t get your hopes too high when it comes down to it. It’s almost always likely you’ll only get those hopes dashed. I really ought know better by now, but I simply do not learn.

My expectations were higher than high and I suppose that’s why it fell flat on me–I was expecting so much more from this story than it could offer; which is entirely my own fault. Because the truth is, it wasn’t all that bad of a novel–it was, I’ll say, quite good. It just left me feeling unfulfilled more than it left me feeling good.

Which, for other readers, may be a great thing. It just wasn’t what I was expecting.

My problem with The World Before Us was that it had so much promise to it but ultimately didn’t follow through. It kept tripping over itself at times while trying to balance everything out–the plots, the past, the present. 

Continued @ BOOKEDJ.

The brilliant, hauntingly beautiful second novel, twelve years in the making, from a writer whose previous novel Stay was a Globe and Mail Top 100 pick, a finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award, and made into a feature film. When she was just fifteen, smart, sensitive Jane Standen lived through a nightmare: she lost the sweet five-year-old girl she was minding during a walk in the woods. The little girl was never found, leaving her family, and Jane, devastated. Now the grown-up Jane is an archivist at a small London museum that is about to close for lack of funding. As her one last project, she is searching the archives for scraps of information related to another missing person--a woman who disappeared some 125 years ago from a Victorian asylum. As the novel moves back and forth between the museum in contemporary London, the Victorian asylum, and a dilapidated country house that seems to connect both missing people, it unforgettably explores the repercussions of small acts, the power of affection, and the irrepressible vitality of everyday objects and events. Here is a rivetting, gorgeously written novel that powerfully reminds us of the possibility that we are less alone than we might think.

The World Before Us

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