Spookygirl - Hardcover

Jill Baguchinsky

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525425845 ISBN 13: 9780525425847

Publisher: Dutton Juvenile, 2012

Synopsis

Violet Addison can chat with the dead, but what really frightens her is starting her sophomore year at a new school. Still reeling from the loss of her mother, Violet is about find herself in the company of ghosts . . . both playful and deadly evil. Standing at the threshold to an unseen world with newfound friends at her side, only Violet can uncover the truth behind her mother’s death and save the family business--paranormal investigation.

About this title

Review:

Gayle Forman Reviews Spookygirl

Gayle Forman is an award-winning author and journalist. She began her career writing for numerous publications, including The Nation, Family Circle, Cosmopolitan, Details, Elle, and Seventeen Magazine. In 2002, Forman took a trip around the world, resulting in her first book, a travel memoir called You Can't Get There From Here: A Year On The Fringes Of A Shrinking World. In 2007 she published her first young adult novel, Sisters in Sanity, based on an article she had written for Seventeen. Two years later, Gayle Forman wrote If I Stay, an emotionally arresting story of 17-year-old Mia in the 24 hours after a catastrophic car accident. Currently in development with Summit Entertainment, If I Stay received five starred reviews, was honored as the 2009 NAIBA Book of the Year and was a 2010 Indie Choice Honor Award winner. Her newest novel, Where She Went, is a companion novel to If I Stay. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her family. Read her review of Jill Baguchinsky's Spookygirl:

Like her mother before her, fifteen-year-old Violet can communicate with ghosts. But the one ghost she cannot talk to is that of her mother, who died seven years earlier during a paranormal investigation. After having been exiled to live with an aunt, Violet returns to live with her father above the funeral home he now runs, which, as you might expect, is a popular haunt for spooks. So, it turns out, is Violet’s new Florida high school. No sooner does she enroll than she discovers a mysterious dark presence in the girls’ locker room, and the spirit of Dirk, a dead jock, lurking in the art classroom. Violet’s ability to see Dirk earns her the moniker "spookygirl" from her classmates and the respect of the Goth kids and of Timmy, a wanna-be Goth and half vampire. Part of the book’s charm is the normalcy of it all--Violet has a pet poltergeist named Buster that is as rambunctious as an unruly animal--but this can sometimes rob the narrative of its tension. There’s no price to be paid for Violet’s powers. A plotline with the locker room and a potentially demonic gym teacher goes nowhere. When Violet takes up her mother’s mantle as a sort of ghost whisperer, trying to find resolution for the conflicts between ghosts and the humans they haunt, the story finds its heart, though the narrative seems to raise some unintentional questions: Is it really healthy for the dead and the living to go on together as though nothing has happened? That said, this is a fully realized novel, with a sweet voice, humor, some lovely descriptions, and a unique premise. Violet would be at home on bookshelves alongside the likes of Paranormalcy’s Evie. --Gayle Forman

(Photo © Nick Tucker)

Read more expert reviews of Spookygirl

About the Author:

Jill Baguchinsky, a longtime fan of supernatural tales, wrote the first draft of Spookygirl as part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0525425845
• ISBN 13: 9780525425847
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288