Ghostgirl

Rating: 1.5/5

If you'd like to see this review on my blog.

Ghostgirl is the story about Charlotte, a seventeen year old girl who's been invisible for her whole life. The summer before her last school year she decides to change things, and comes back with the new resolution of becoming popular. But everything changes when on the first day, she dies.

I read this book when I was 10 years old or so. I tough they were really good. They brought this new idea of how was life after death, specially life after dead for teenagers. And I'm not going to lie, I fell for it. The whole idea was very attractive to me, the characters where awesome, they listened to good music, the book itself was very beautiful, amazing art job. And I must confess, I did something that it's kind of a sin, but back them I didn't know. I read the second book first. You see, my dad gave me this book as a gift, because I asked, but he didn't know anything about it and back then I didn't know about Goodreads or Booktube or anything like that, so I read the book and only after I finished it did I realized that it was the second book. A year later, I read this book.

The overall idea of this book is really nice, very interesting and kind of unique. It's about Charlotte and her life after dead, and how she has to deal with unfinished business and growing up and letting go. It really is a very good plot. And I would have loved it, if it wasn't for the execution. Wow, really, was I blind back when I started reading.

This book has one of the most annoying, not believable, very frustrating characters I've ever read. They're so immature it's ridiculous, they do this things that don't have a reason to be and think stuff so ludicrous and ridiculous. And Charlotte is just plain annoying. She just makes decisions without thinking about anyone else and then says “Oh, poor me, I'm so lonely, nobody likes me, it's all my fault” and then does it again. And then we have Scarlet. She is actually one of the best characters, i believe. I think she's ok, I don't have much to say about her. The only thing I do hate about them is that they claim so fiercely that they are best friends and that they are forever when I doubt they ever talked for more than 10 minutes about themselves and they have literally nothing in common. Then we have the others like Petula and her friends. Oh, for God's sake WTF. Really. That it just plain ridiculous and stupid. And lastly, Damen (typical high school hottie name), if he's so nice, why is he with Petula? Just going to live it there.

Then we have the plot. Like I said, the idea is interesting, but the execution? The plot is based in one stupid decision behind another and all turns around the high school prom. Apparently, that's the only thing that matters. And the whole book increasingly fills with problems and more problems, and when the end comes, it all just ties together like if nothing ever happened. It all worked out just perfect, even though she kind of screwed a lot of people lives and pissed almost all of them. We all love each other at the end. Yeah, right -.-‘'‘

One thing that really annoyed me is how the narrator tells you everything. Like “She was a quiet girl, the kind that does this and that and she probably didn't know about this, but she likes her anyway, etc” and I'm just sitting there like “NO!”, you're supposed to tell me about all of this through character development, which it has none by the way. And it continues to do this trough out all the book. It's like having a constant interruption for things that are unnecessary, have nothing to do with plot or I already knew. Or all of them.

I like a few things, like the concept of teenagers having to pass a class before going to heaven because of the unfinished business. That's really original. I liked it. Also, all those quotes at the beginning of every chapter. Those were really cool. And also the physical decoration of the book is beautiful. It really is.

At the end, a book that was unique and fun to read when I was younger, is now a very badly written book with annoying characters and unrealistic moments. The most I can recommend is for you to read this when you're younger, not after.

If you'd like to see my review of Homecoming.

If you'd like to see my review of Lovesick.

I found myself annoyed by this book. I didn't enjoy the story or the characters, found the over-abundance of pop culture references smug, and the whole story far too self-satisfied and moralizing to be very much fun. Not at all well written, either. The whole experience was something akin to being followed around by someone who cannot stop explaining even the most obvious statements, plot devices, and characters' thoughts and motivations. I'm disappointed.

The design of the book, however, is beautiful. They got the gothic touch just right.