The quick cut: Two girls who barely interact come together to solve the mystery of why they are both being haunted by the ghost of a classmate who disappeared years ago.
A real review:
Thank you to Penguin Group for providing the arc for an honest review.
Figuring out who you are is hard enough, but when you don't necessarily identify with your born gender or expected sexuality - that process gets harder. For Jaq and Fern, that's something they will learn together when they discover they are both being haunted by a classmate who disappeared years ago.
Five years ago, three girls went into the woods and one named Mal never came out. Since that night, Jaq and Fern haven't remembered their lives before that point. Now in their senior year, they are practically unrecognizable. Jaq is a cisgender girl who is thoroughly in love with her boyfriend John. Fern is the queen of her school's theatre department. From the outside, their lives are fantastic. However, that idyllic image is shattered when they start seeing the ghost of Mal. Are they the reason she disappeared? What happened that night in the woods?
I would just like to say that I actually did get to the end of this book and enjoyed the overall story. While I can't relate to the gender or sexuality struggles of these characters, I can relate to their struggles with identity. Unfortunately, the way the story was written made it hard to stay fully engaged and made the pacing quite strange.
Jaq and Fern are living what many would consider the perfect life. It's not for them though because it's not the life that's true to who they are. Ferns struggle to accept what's happening to her made her more relatable to me of the two. Jaq's struggle is oriented more towards her parents desire to have her marry her boyfriend. I never experienced that type of parental pressure.
Seeing these two slowly rediscover their true identities and how that created new issues for them was a realistic feeling process. It's messy, difficult, and not always accepted. The family's reactions of acceptance, confusion, or rejection are handled well. Each one feels realistic and like something that could really happen to someone.
A fun horror story with pacing issues.
My rating: 3.5 out of 5
Comments