OCTOBER 2022 - AudioFile
Narrator Jess Nahikian’s tender delivery suits this audiobook about a girl who lives in a funeral home. Georgia, voiced delicately in a youthful tone, has tremendous anxiety about death. To cope, she uses her ability to awaken the ghosts of the dead to fulfill their final wishes and hold onto their memories. Then her classmate Milo dies in an accident, and her town’s performative mourning, along with Milo’s personal request, increases her desperation to help, despite having barely known him before he died. Nahikian’s soothing voice allows young listeners to process heavy topics like death and mourning. Characters are given distinct voices, and Nahikian’s emotional tones honestly convey their complex feelings. A.K.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
"[G]ive Ohland's first novel high marks for its unusual premise and vivid characterization of its imperfect protagonist." — Booklist
OCTOBER 2022 - AudioFile
Narrator Jess Nahikian’s tender delivery suits this audiobook about a girl who lives in a funeral home. Georgia, voiced delicately in a youthful tone, has tremendous anxiety about death. To cope, she uses her ability to awaken the ghosts of the dead to fulfill their final wishes and hold onto their memories. Then her classmate Milo dies in an accident, and her town’s performative mourning, along with Milo’s personal request, increases her desperation to help, despite having barely known him before he died. Nahikian’s soothing voice allows young listeners to process heavy topics like death and mourning. Characters are given distinct voices, and Nahikian’s emotional tones honestly convey their complex feelings. A.K.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2022-06-08
Haunted every day by the inescapability of death, Georgia awakens the dead who pass through her family’s funeral home, fulfilling their final requests and clinging to their memories.
No one in Georgia’s family knows about her secret power to speak with ghosts or understands her overwhelming anxiety, especially not Peter, her perfect twin brother, who loves the family business and embraces the expectation that they will one day run it together. When one of their classmates dies, Georgia becomes consumed by her desperation to help the ghost of a boy she barely knew. Touched by the supernatural, this debut grapples with grief and mental health, exploring the differing ways people cope with emotions, how the living memorialize the dead, and who is entitled to mourn them. In the midst of her fixation, asexual Georgia also faces turmoil in her relationships with her empathetic, nonbinary, Chinese American best friend, Amy; her Black ex–best friend, Eileen; and Peter. The story is set in a town with little racial or religious diversity, and Amy and Eileen, the only significant characters of color in the novel, are notably less well developed and well rounded than the White protagonist. However, the narrative handles the heavy topic of death with honest complexity.
A moody, contemplative ghost story with uneven characterization. (author’s note, discussion questions) (Paranormal. 13-18)
