Review: Ghosting

By Edith Pattou
Available now from Skyscape (Amazon)
Review copy

I love Edith Pattou's young adult fantasy novels and I'm a big fan of novels in verse, so I couldn't resist giving GHOSTING a try.  It is a contemporary novel about the last night of summer before school starts again.  A group of (semi-) friends heads out: Emma, Maxie, Felix, Brendan, Chloe, and Anil.  There are also two more narrators: Emma's younger sister and a strange boy with a shotgun.

(Okay, and a few poems from the police chief.)

It's very obvious from the beginning of GHOSTING that something is going to go awry.  There's a building tension, right up to the point where it all explodes.  But there's also lots of little human moments between the six teens who are mostly just trying to have a little fun.  Even the cruel Brendan is very humanized.

Some might be put off by the free-verse format, but I think it is well done.  Most of the voices are pretty distinct, and the directness of the address works.  There's a clear logic to how a series of not-that-bad decisions lead to tragedy.  I will admit though that I felt the authorial strings at time.  The way Faith (the little sister) arrives on scene felt blatantly artificial.  And Walter (the boy with the shotgun) felt like a caricature, which was a shame given how deeply the other teens were drawn.

I think GHOSTING will appeal to fans of Ellen Hopkins and Laurie Halse Anderson.  It has a similar feel, both realistic and concerned with social issues.  I'd recommend GHOSTING for the upper YA range, given some of the violence in the novel.