Megan Crewe – Give Up the Ghost

Cass McKenna preferă fantomele în locul celor vii. Fantomele nu sunt complicate şi poţi avea încredere în ele, şi ei ştiu secretele murdare ale tuturor … şi Cass le iubeşte. Ea are misiunea de a expune secretele murdare ale colegilor ei care pretind a fi ceva ce nu sunt.

Dar când vice-presedintele Consiliului de studenţi descoperă secretul ei, întreaga schemă a lui Cass atârnă în balanţă. Tim vrea ca ea să îl ajute să îşi contacteze mama recent decedată, şi fără tragere de inimă Cass este de acord.

În timp ce Cass devine tot mai implicată în viaţa lui Tim, ea este surprinsă când realizează că el nu este chiar aşa de rău – şi el are nevoie de ajutor disperat mai mult decât oricine altcineva. Poate  că e timpul pentru a da o nouă şansă celor vii …

Pentru cei care vor şi mai multe detalii:

Cass is one angry young woman when we first meet her, and she is trying to deal with several difficult situations. Her older sister was tragically killed four years before, and her mother still isn’t over the loss. To cope, she travels constantly, freelancing as a travel journalist and avoiding the family home, and the memories contained there, as much as possible. There is a lot of tension between mother and daughter, as Cass struggles with her own grief, and her feelings of abandonment. Brooding and quiet, she also feels inadequate when compared to her bubbly sister.

In addition to her troubles at home, Cass isn’t exactly the most popular girl at school. Long an outcast when her best friend betrays her, Cass has stopped trying to fit in. Instead, she is like a little black storm cloud of doom, ratting out everyone’s secrets. She thinks that by publicly airing their dirty laundry, she’s keeping people in check. Using tidbits of gossip she gleans from her ghostly friends, she mines them like nuggets of gold. Cass has the dirt on everyone, and nobody can figure out where she’s getting it from.

Give Up the Ghost is an entertaining, fast-paced read. Cass isn’t a likable girl at the beginning of the book, but she’s kept sympathetic because she doesn’t like herself, either. She’s given up on people and all of their complications, and is instead content to keep company with her ghosts. When popular Tim approaches her about communicating with his dead mother, she has to confront all of the relationship hang-ups she has been avoiding for so long. This makes her re-examine herself and her motivations for the past four years, and makes her see herself in an entirely different light.

With convincing dialog, Cass is forced to learn how to communicate again, with both her peers and her family. Nudging her along is Tim, who is sinking into self-destructive behavior and is on a collision course with tragedy. When Cass starts to take an interest in his well-being, she begins to remember what it’s like to care for others again, and that’s the key to her redemption. It’s gratifying to see the change in her, from bitter and resentful, to caring and concerned. It’s not easy for her to face her own faults, but she finally finds the strength to start looking ahead, instead of always glancing into the past.