This book follows Emma, a high school student who suddenly starts seeing, and touching, dead people. While she's dealing with this, she's also dealing with a couple new students (Eric and Chase) who know that someone with her powers is in town and want to find and kill them, as people with those abilities apparently are always evil.
The story was interesting, following Emma as she learns what's going on with her and what she can do, often directly against the advice Eric and Chase. Their story is interesting as well, as they try to reconcile the idea that they've always killed people with these powers as soon as they start developing (to prevent evil from getting out of hand), with the fact that Emma is quiet clearly not evil.
There could have been more explanation and talking between various characters. Emma has three different sources of information about what's going on, but all of them do their best to refuse to tell her anything. In the meantime Emma is telling everything to just about everyone she runs into. This lead to my biggest problem with the story - everyone just accepts that ghosts are real and Emma can interact with them and oh yeah, Eric and Chase are probably here to kill her with barely a blink. Or any real concern. One friend makes it clear she's not happy with Eric and Chase, but that's pretty much it.
However, despite being interested in the story, I was unable to finish it, due to part of the storyline affecting me too strongly.
***SPOILER***
As Emma starts hearing and seeing ghosts, one stands out above the rest. She investigates and finds that it's the ghost of a 4 year old boy killed in a fire 10 days ago. That's tragic and sad. However, further investigation reveals that the only reason he died is because he was scared and when his Mom tried to get him to follow her out of the house threw a fit and refuse to come unless she carried him. But her arms were already full of his two younger siblings. And that broke my heart. I've got a little girl of my own and that behavior from the boy is very understandable, but the heartbreak of the Mom not being able to carry all three was devastating (even though I know this is just a fiction book, I couldn't stop putting myself in the Mom's shoes). When this was first mentioned I had to walk away from the book for a few hours before I could continue. When I continued the book moved on to something else and I was able to continue reading it. But then they returned to immerse in this story, and I started skimming, then skipping entire pages hoping to get past it, but it became clear that a lot of the rest of the book was involved with trying to free the little boy, which meant getting Mom involved and trying to get him to believe she'd come back to him.
***END SPOILER***
I just couldn't keep reading. However, I imagine most people would find this story sad, but not as strongly as I did and would be able to enjoy the whole story. Also, I'm not holding this against the book, as I do feel it was appropriate to the story and not just emotional manipulation.
The story was interesting, following Emma as she learns what's going on with her and what she can do, often directly against the advice Eric and Chase. Their story is interesting as well, as they try to reconcile the idea that they've always killed people with these powers as soon as they start developing (to prevent evil from getting out of hand), with the fact that Emma is quiet clearly not evil.
There could have been more explanation and talking between various characters. Emma has three different sources of information about what's going on, but all of them do their best to refuse to tell her anything. In the meantime Emma is telling everything to just about everyone she runs into. This lead to my biggest problem with the story - everyone just accepts that ghosts are real and Emma can interact with them and oh yeah, Eric and Chase are probably here to kill her with barely a blink. Or any real concern. One friend makes it clear she's not happy with Eric and Chase, but that's pretty much it.
However, despite being interested in the story, I was unable to finish it, due to part of the storyline affecting me too strongly.
***SPOILER***
As Emma starts hearing and seeing ghosts, one stands out above the rest. She investigates and finds that it's the ghost of a 4 year old boy killed in a fire 10 days ago. That's tragic and sad. However, further investigation reveals that the only reason he died is because he was scared and when his Mom tried to get him to follow her out of the house threw a fit and refuse to come unless she carried him. But her arms were already full of his two younger siblings. And that broke my heart. I've got a little girl of my own and that behavior from the boy is very understandable, but the heartbreak of the Mom not being able to carry all three was devastating (even though I know this is just a fiction book, I couldn't stop putting myself in the Mom's shoes). When this was first mentioned I had to walk away from the book for a few hours before I could continue. When I continued the book moved on to something else and I was able to continue reading it. But then they returned to immerse in this story, and I started skimming, then skipping entire pages hoping to get past it, but it became clear that a lot of the rest of the book was involved with trying to free the little boy, which meant getting Mom involved and trying to get him to believe she'd come back to him.
***END SPOILER***
I just couldn't keep reading. However, I imagine most people would find this story sad, but not as strongly as I did and would be able to enjoy the whole story. Also, I'm not holding this against the book, as I do feel it was appropriate to the story and not just emotional manipulation.
