"This book possessed me." —Melissa Albert, author of The Children

Hello, World! introduces a high-flying, high concept debut from a major new voice that reads like if David Mitchell wrote Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.

A perfect reality. A broken family. The secrets that will unravel everything.

World was created to be a perfect virtual reality, a simulated shelter from the devastation of the real world. Enter your Preferences, say goodbye to your own reality, and plug in. Here, you can choose every detail. You can manufacture the right house, the right weather, the right life. If you hate rain, make every day sunny. You can banish mushrooms and pumpernickel bread from your world altogether, or even make all food taste like dessert. The price? You must leave everything behind. No ties, no memories, no baggage. When you wake up in World, you are free.

Aleta Seppala is living what ought to be an idyllic life inside World with her husband and daughter—every Preference accounted for, proof of what a well-crafted reality can offer. But one day, she disappears without a trace, leaving a grieving family and community behind.

Elliane Seppala grows up believing that her mother abandoned her. Her father, Ted, thinks his wife was taken, and he suspects his friend and business partner. Their misery and loneliness aren’t supposed to be possible, not here. Not in World.

When Elliane meets a mysterious stranger who claims to know exactly what happened to Aleta, she begins to suspect that World might be falling apart, glitch by glitch. As Preferences collapse and the increasing chaos threatens to destroy everything that matters, Elliane finds herself running out of time to solve the mystery that has clouded her heart for the better part of her life.

Deliciously escapist and wrenchingly profound, Hello, World! asks whether we’re hardwired to repeat mistakes and what happens when we get everything we ever thought we wanted.