While in a coma following an automobile accident that killed her parents and younger brother, seventeen-year-old Mia, a gifted cellist, weighs whether to live with her grief or join her family in death.

Mathilda (Tilly), fourteen, and Ruth Anne (Roo), sixteen, are sisters and best friends in Connecticut, but when Roo crashes her car while texting she is confined to a hospital bed with "locked-in syndrome," aware of her surroundings, but apparently comatose--and Tilly must find a way to communicate with her sister, while dealing with her own sense of guilt.

A woman prone to secret temporary comas that make her appear to be dead receives protection from a redemption-seeking former lover who would save her from being buried alive by her fortune-hunting husband.

When high school junior Tessa Reynolds falls into a coma after getting hit in the head during gym class, she experiences heaven as the mall where her parents work, and she revisits key events from her life, causing her to reevaluate herself and how she wants to live.