City of Ghosts (Victoria Schwab)

City of Ghosts
The City of Ghosts series, Book 1
Victoria Schwab
Scholastic
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Thriller
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: One year ago, Cass's ordinary childhood ended with a plunge off a bridge into an icy river. She was found on the bank, soaked but otherwise unharmed... but what her parents never knew, and would never believe, is that she actually died, only to be saved by the ghost boy Jacob. Ever since, she's been able to sense the presence of ghosts, parting the Veil between our world and theirs, where they live eternal loops of their final moments. And ever since then, Jacob has been her companion and best friend, so real she sometimes forgets he's a ghost and she's the only one who can see and hear him. She doesn't wonder why, doesn't wonder if perhaps there's a deeper reason for her new sensitivities, until she finds herself in Edinburgh, Scotland. If she thought New York had ghosts, the centuries-old city has her home beat hands down on the haunting front. She also finds out that she's not the only girl with her unusual spirit detection skills - just when she comes face to face with the most terrifying ghost she's ever encountered, a cunning predator of Edinburgh's children who has set her sights on Cass.

REVIEW: Another quick audiobook to pass time at work, City of Ghosts delivers what it promises: a spooky middle-grade tale of a girl doing some amateur ghost-busting in Edinburgh with her spirit companion and a new friend. Cass isn't a bad heroine, though she seems a little too prone to messing up and needing rescue. When she discovers an English girl touched by her own gift, she's thrilled at first... until she discovers what that girl does with her gift, and possibly what she's expected to do, too. Cass's parents, co-authors of a popular series on the supernatural that is being turned into a documentary series (her mother thrives on ghost stories, while her professor father loves the history, though neither truly seems to believe in the spirit world despite their daughter claiming to have a ghostly pal), are vaguely supportive but not really involved in the girl's increasingly fractious relationship with the spirits and the Veil. Things ratchet up at a decent pace, with several encounters, until things go disastrously wrong with the red-cloaked ghost and Cass must figure out how to avoid a second, more permanent death before her time and luck run out. The whole has a certain pilot-episode feel to it, establishing Cass and Jacob and the "rules" while leaving several threads dangling for the next installment of their adventures, and indeed it does kick off a series. Not a bad story, all in all, spooky and fast-paced.

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