Saturday, January 14, 2017

The Ungrateful Dead by Rose Cooper - OPTIONAL

Cooper, Rose The Ungrateful Dead (Dead Serious 2), 199 pgs. Delacorte Press, 2016.  $12.99.  Language G; Mature Content G; Violence G.

The second in the Dead Serious novels, The Ungrateful Dead could still be read as a stand-alone book.  Anna is “a guided,” someone who helps the dead transition.  While walking home from school, Anna comes across the body of a beautiful teen girl named Harper, who looks as if she has fallen from a balcony.  Harper doesn’t really want Anna’s help because Anna doesn’t have much fashion sense, but does accept help from a ghost who does.  Lucy, a vindictive ghost who has issues with Anna, tells Harper how she can come back alive.  Anna must navigate how to deal with her new mean-girl stepsister, following her mother’s sudden remarriage to the local mortician while allowing Harper to “live” in her stepfather’s large home.  

This book is a fast read and has some fun cartoonish line art sprinkled in.  Anna’s world is a bit of a soap opera for someone so young.  Apparently dead teenage girls are even more shallow in death, so the dead aren’t likeable and the book reads like a middle school drama fest with a few dead people thrown in.

MS-OPTIONAL.  Michelle in the Middle

No comments: