Author: Aprilynne Pike
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 9780007515554
Rating: A
Kimberlee's dead. Has been for a while, actually. Stuck haunting the halls of her high school, she's doomed to an afterlife of boredom. That is until the new kid shows up. The first thing Jeff spots is Kimberlee lying on the floor as other students walk right through her. Pretty soon she's harangued him into helping her escape to the afterlife. Kimberlee guesses that once Jeff rights her mean girl wrongs she'll be able to move on. But nothing is simple in life after death...Clash meets sass in this uproarious modern-day retelling of Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, by #1 New York Times bestselling author.
Well where do I start with this. This left me speechless. I loved Pike's Wings series so when I saw this I was excited. Not only because it sounded amazing but also because it was rather different from here previous series, as all to often authors stick to the same sort of thing! This book however is absolutely perfect and I couldn't fault it.
The story follows Jeff, a boy who has moved to a new place and has started seeing a ghost. She is Kimberly the ex, queen bee of the school, hated by most, loved by some and she has a problem. She stole too much and Jeff has to return it all. Now this book had the romance factor in it too but it wasn't just thrown in there for the sake of it. It was actually very clever and worked with the overall plot really well, adding an extra charm to it. In fact the plot was fantastic! It was nicely fast paced, making it a wonderful read, whilst being very real and grounded but still exhilarating me completely. I feel like when authors go down the route of ghosts there's a couple of ways to go but this ghost story was crafted perfectly, and don't let 'ghost story' put you off because it's a completely new addition to the sub-genre.
The writing is so beautiful and I think because Pike previously wrote such a stunning series her writing really hone through in this. The way she manipulated words makes for a very whimsical and beautiful read whilst still having punch and and good hit! The way the world and characters materialise in you mind is absolutely perfect. When I was reading i didn't feel like I was reading anything at all. I felt as if it was all natural and as if I was in the book watching the story unfold. This honestly is one of the most perfectly balanced books when talking about the balance between description and dialogue, that I have read in a long time and provided a truly magical prose.
I liked the characters in this because they were all so unique and independent. All of them, say for Kim, were strong alone but stronger in Unity. Another things that struck me as good, was the fact that we got a lot of back story to all the characters. Of course the characters were well formed anyway but backstories and true colours of characters aren't usually revealed till a sequel but in this we got too see everyones history which was a really nice addition. There were a small circle of characters in it but the main were 4 characters, with semi mains characters appearing every now and then.
Honestly the works that strikes me about this book is: Perfect. I couldn't fault, not at all. Reading this book, it was nice to see a whole new side to Pike and I think she has proved herself as an incredibly worthy author. I will most definitely be reading anything she writes and I look forward to seeing whatever she brings along next. This book was bliss to read and I would do so a thousand times.
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