Chuyển đến nội dung chính

Notes from Ghost Town

By Kate Ellison

I really don't like romances.  I never have.  I also don't like mysteries.  I especially don't like murder mysteries.  This is exactly what Notes from Ghost Town is.  It is a romantic murder mystery.  A girl, Liv (Olivia),  falls in love with Stern, her best friend.  Stern kisses her, says its a mistake, and leaves.  Liv goes colorblind and then goes back to art school.  She decides she is going to call Stern in two weeks.  But, he is dead in one week and her schizophrenic mom is in jail for it.  Her mom is planning on pleading insanity.  That is how that book starts.  Then it goes into her teenage life.  The normal 'no one understands' and 'I pity myself' goes on for a while.  Until finally, something happens.  There is about one week left before Liv's mom's final sentencing when Stern comes to Liv as a Ghost and says her mom is innocent.  That's when it picks up.  The story goes on from there and Liv works to solve Stern's murder.  Once she started actually doing things in relation to Stern's murder it ended up quite good.

I found that this book was actually really good.  I was impressed, because I don't generally like mysteries or romances.  I went into the book hating it and came out pleased.  Although one regret was that the murderer was predictable.  Even though Liv did a lot of stupid stuff in the book she didn't miss a lot.  The murderer wasn't staring her in the face even though it was predictable from outside the book.  The cover was also horrible.  I found the cover to be revolting.  I hoped that I would understand why there was a dead girl on the cover when I finished reading it but I still don't know why.  I have said quite a lot of bad stuff about this book even though I think it is quite good.  The best part of the book was the plot.  The time restraint made it better because you knew that it wouldn't go on forever and it put pressure on Liv.  I also thought it was well paced.  I also enjoyed her color blindness.  I think this added to her despair in a more real way than the pain that she tries to describe.  I'm not sure was food this is but what I would do if you want a food is to think of a food you hate.  Absolutely hate.  Then once you start eating it the texture is awful and you don't think you can take another bite when surprisingly it starts to taste good.  It gets an interesting flavor until finally you start liking it.  Another unfortunate problem with the book was the ending.  It ended too fast.  The whole book was drawn out at a good pace and then BAM, it was over.  I would give this book a 3.5.  It was surprisingly good but did have shortcomings.

Nhận xét

Popular Posts

The Princess Who Flew with Dragons, by Stephanie Burgis

I still am busily reading elementary/middle grade speculative fiction a in my roles as a judge for the Cybils Awards (mainly going back to re-read things I read early last year), but I am in good enough shape that I treated myself one dreary day last week to a shiny and new and much anticipated book-- The Princess Who Flew with Dragons , by Stephanie Burgis (Bloomsbury, November 2019). This is the third in the series that began with The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart (link to my review), and it's possibly the one I enjoyed most.  I certainly think it was the fastest read; it was a (more or less) single-sitting of about an hour read for me (when I like a book and need to know what's going to happen next, I read faster, and it was relatively short-- 216 pages). Princess Sophia, who we met in Book 2, The Girl with a Dragon Heart , is the main character here, and when her story begins, she's being sent by her older sister, the ruling princess, to a distant city to attend a Worl...

The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away, by Ronald L. Smith (review and interview)

I first had the pleasure of meeting Ronald L. Smith at Kidlitcon back in 2015 (PSA--come to Kidlitcon 2020 in Ann Arbor next March!).  His first middle grade book, Hoodoo, a tale of supernatural horror in the south, had just been published, and I enjoyed it very much ( my review ).  I likewise enjoyed The Mesmerist (2017), about kids fighting evil in 19th century London ( my review ).  I never reviewed Black Panther: the Young Prince (2018)….someday I will.  So in any event, I was very excited about his most recent book, The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away (Clarion Books, February 2019). This is the story of an air force kid, Simon, son of a black mom and a white dad, who's obsessed with aliens.  He's convinced owl-like aliens have arrived, watching and experimenting on humans.  His family has no time or patience for aliens, so Simon is alone with his fears of the Grays, as he calls them.  When something very strange happens on a camping trip with hi...

The Wind Eye, by Robert Westall, for Timeslip Tuesday

This week's Timeslip Tuesday book is an older English one-- The Wind Eye , by Robert Westall (upper MG/YA 1976, still in print).  Westall's work ranges from picture books to adult, often exploring how the past hits the present in dark and mysterious ways.  Which is what happens in The Wind Eye.... It begins when a family, comprising a mother and her teenaged son married to a father with two daughters (one a young teen and one a little girl), setting off to the northeast coast of England to stay in the old house the father has just inherited.  They are not a happy family.  The kids get along fine, but the parents are not getting on well at all. And then the past and the present collide.   St. Cuthbert still is a real person to the people of this part of the Northumberland coast, and he becomes so to the kids as well when they find a boat that travels back to his time, taking them out to the island that was his retreat from the world.   Along the way, there's...