Review By: Jenna Ballard
Published: 2025
Genre(s): Science Fiction, Dystopia, Adventure
Audience: Grades 7–12
Content Warnings: Profanity, sexual content
Reviewer’s Note: “I chose this book because the premise sounded really intriguing and I wanted to know how it would all unfold.”
Goodreads Link: Best of All Worlds
Summary:
Thirteen-year-old Xavier wakes up at his family’s lake house only to find the lake, the neighborhood, and the world outside have vanished. In their place stands a strange farm surrounded by an invisible dome. Three years later, another family suddenly appears, and tension quickly builds as their clashing beliefs and personalities collide. Trapped together, both families must confront questions about survival, morality, and what divides—or connects—people when the world falls away.
Review:
This novel kicks off with a great plot immediately, which I find to be more and more important to my students when selecting independent reading books. If something doesn’t grab them from the first chapter—sometimes even from the very first couple of pages—many students are not interested in giving it more of a chance and stick it back on the shelf for something else. Luckily, Best of All Worlds introduces the reader to its mysterious premise right away: 13-year-old Xavier wakes up one morning in the middle of an “unplugged” family getaway in their lake house with his father and pregnant stepmother. When Xavier goes downstairs and looks out the window, something isn’t right—the lake is gone. So are any other houses or any roads. Instead, he sees a farm, complete with barn and goats. That most certainly was not there yesterday. Yet inside the house, everything appears as usual. Pretty quickly, Xavier and his family discover that they have somehow been transplanted to this mysterious place while they slept, and they can only walk so far before they encounter an invisible wall. They are trapped inside a dome with no Internet or cell service, or no idea who—or what—put them there. Fast forward 3 years, and another family pops up in the dome in the same exact way. Now 16, Xavier is thrilled to have other humans to interact with—but these neighbors don’t exactly see eye-to-eye with his family.
As mentioned, the premise is rolled out within the few first pages and the pace moves quite steadily throughout the entire novel, which is only 256 pages—all of this makes this an excellent choice for older “reluctant readers,” though there is also some higher-level vocabulary and complex issues discussed so I wouldn’t consider it an “easy” or low-level read. Once the second family comes into the plot, the two families basically represent two ends of the political spectrum. Xavier’s liberal Canadian family is a blended one with his stepmother being of Haitian descent (as is his half-brother who is born in the dome), while the new family are white, very religious, and conservative Southerners. The parents in each family often get in heated debates about everything from climate change to vaccines to racism, with Xavier mostly sharing his parents’ beliefs but at times feeling exasperated that his own family seems so judgmental and rigid in their own views.
There is some sexual content to be aware of (as well as several “f-bombs”), especially for any librarians like me who are in a 5th–8th grade middle school. I would have no problem giving this book to an 8th grader, but it would not be the right fit for a 5th grader. I actually decided to shelf it in my Teen Fiction section rather than Science Fiction because I tend to gently discourage 5th graders from borrowing from Teen Fiction, so it is more likely to find the right audience if it is kept here.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to fans of Sci-Fi, dystopia, and survival fiction. If we could do half stars, I would give it 3.5 out of 5!
