Haunt Me

May 8, 2017
Kessler (Read Me Like a Book) complicates a traditional love triangle in unexpected and moving ways, alternating between the perspectives of two 16-year-olds. Erin was in an accident when she was 11, and she never found her footing in secondary school, which led to a friendless and bullied existence; her only solace is her poetry. Joe felt similarly isolated before he died, finding his voice by writing song lyrics. Shortly after Joe’s death, his family moves out of their home, and Erin’s family moves in. Joe recognizes Erin as a kindred spirit and slowly reveals himself to her. Through a mutual understanding of each other’s angst and loneliness, the two fall in love. But an affair between a ghost and a living girl doesn’t come without complications, the biggest of which is Joe’s older brother, Olly, who is also seeking a way to connect with Joe. This thoroughly romantic story is heartbreaking but hopeful: Kessler gives Joe a reason to cross over, and Olly and Erin a reason to live. Ages 12–up. Agent: Catherine Clarke, Felicity Bryan Associates.

June 1, 2017

Gr 8 Up-Erin and Joe share a room. One of them is dead. Tragedies are behind the moves of both families. Joe's family leaves the house, and Erin's family moves in. Erin and Joe become aware of each other, and both desire a relationship, despite the chasm of death between them. This work alternates between Erin's and Joe's first-person perspectives. Erin struggles to come out of her shell and make friends in her new town and school. Her wish for a human connection drives her infatuation with Joe. The narrative begins with Joe watching his parents and brother leave the house. He doesn't yet realize that he is dead. Trapped in his room, unable to touch people or objects unless he feels strongly about them, Joe becomes engrossed with Erin. The novel deals with issues of death, bullying, grief, and suicide in a nonpatronizing way. There is also a predictable love triangle. Fans of Twilight and other paranormal romance titles will enjoy the impossible situation in which Erin and Joe find themselves. The more serious themes are dealt with adequately, though they serve as more of a backdrop to the plot. VERDICT A serviceable addition to paranormal romance collections.-Maureen Sullivan, Calumet City Public Library, IL

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2017
Her family moved to give Erin a fresh start, and, for the first time--though she'd gladly settle for going unnoticed--someone sees her clearly: Joe, the dead boy whose room she now occupies. The pendant Erin finds in her closet sparks their connection, as do the passionate, unhappy poems he's scrawled on the closet walls; her own writing's helped Erin survive years of chronic anxiety and bullying. Unclear on how he died or why he's confined to his bedroom, Joe regains a physical presence when Erin's present--they can even touch--but when she leaves the room, he drifts into an insubstantial half life. When his terror manifests physically, he's exorcized (against Erin's wishes) and reawakens in another former refuge, a seaside cove. Sensing his time is running out, helpless to move beyond his rocky prison, Joe clings to Erin, his remaining hold on a world no longer his. Meanwhile, Erin forges a friendship with Joe's older brother, Olly: handsome, popular, athletic, and very much alive. For Olly, consumed with guilt and grief since Joe's death, Erin's his path to a new life. Kessler delicately plumbs emotional depths, avoiding easy outs. With narration alternating among them, the three principals, all white, are well-drawn, but the increasingly desperate Joe exerts the strongest pull on readers. Though dead, the charismatic Joe tows this delicate romance from the genre shallows into deeper, darker waters, where holding onto love literally separates life from death. (Paranormal romance. 12-17)

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January 1, 2018
Crippled by anxiety after experiencing severe bullying, Erin moves to a new town and home, where her bedroom is inhabited by the ghost of Joe; a romance ensues, but Erin also meets--and connects with--Joe's surviving, guilt-ridden brother Olly. When Erin is bullied again, a climactic scene involves all three teens saving one another. Despite the story's emotional depths, both romantic entanglements feel superficial.

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)