The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson

The Name of the Star is one of those books that I saw reviewed a dozen times but it really didn't grab me. "Girl goes to London, ends up in Jack the Ripper copycat murder investigation" just wasn't appealing. Then I started following @maureenjohnson on Twitter and she completely sold me on it.  I can't even pinpoint why, except that she's a very funny person in that medium and I was dying to be part of the fun of promoting both this book and the one that follows (The Madness Underneath.)  I requested both the paper copy and the e-book copy from the library, and they both came in at the same time. Of course.

So. Girl (Rory) goes to London to live at a boarding school for her senior year of high school. While she's at Wexford, a copy cat murderer starts to kill people in the style of Jack the Ripper. After Rory sees a potential suspect very close to a murder scene, she becomes deeply involved in the investigation, and discovers that she's got new superpowers.

I'm not sure why I ever doubted this one. I've read 13 Little and it's sequel and enjoyed both of them. Why wouldn't this one be as great? Because it totally was. First, Rory has such a great personality. She's a bit quirky, funnily realistic and has a terrific way of talking about her hometown in the swamps of Louisiana.  Rory arrives at Wexford as the token American, and while she doesn't struggle to fit in, the intensity of the boarding school experience is very well written. (I can say that, having gone to boarding school myself.) For example, this paragraph from page 60:

When you live at school, you get close to people really quickly. You never get away. You eat every meal with them. You stand in the shower line with them. You take class and play hockey with them. You sleep in the same place. You begin to see the thousand details of everyday life that you never catch when you just see people during school hours. Because you're there constantly, school time moves differently. After only one week at Wexford, I felt like I'd been there a month.

This is absolutely true. Even if I hated the rest of the book (I didn't), the boarding school bits are completely dead on.

Now that I've talked about everything else, what is the book about? Is the plot any good? Why yes, yes it is. So there's this murderer running around and one of Rory's new friends, the guy she's interested in, happens to be slightly obsessed (along with most of London.) While Rory is tagging along with Jerome, she happens to see a man near a crime scene, and upon further questioning, realizes that no one else can see him. Shockingly, the police take her seriously, and she become crucial to the investigation. Johnson's reasons for why some people can see ghosts are believable (once you believe in ghosts) and there are only a few moments of "hmm, I dunno about that..." It ends in a horrifyingly wonderful way, and has a definite ending while also setting up for the next book in the series. (Kind of like the end of Christine, if you read that. It ends, but there's that little "Ping!" of the next book.) I am really glad that I only have to wait until February 26th for the next book, because I'm really excited to see where this is going.

Because some people care about these things in YA books- there is a little kissing but nothing more. There is a little bit of light drinking, but they are in London, where the drinking age makes the legality of this a bit hazy.

If you pre-order The Madness Underneath, you get free gifts. (Offer ends Feb. 26.)
You can find Maureen Johnson online, on Tumblr (highly recommended), on twitter, and on Facebook.

Source: library e-book.

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Cas Lowood is not your typical teenage boy- he's a ghost hunter. He moves around, tracking the worst of the worst, the ones that are murdering innocent people, and then dispatching them with his father's knife.  His father was killed ten years ago doing the same thing, and now Cas uses his knife to continue the work. Cas and his mother have recently moved to a new town because rumor has it Anna, resident ghost, is getting worse and something needs to be done.  Cas shows up for the first day of school, charms the school's Queen Bee and makes the Head Jock jealous. He cons them in to taking him to see Anna, and then all hell breaks loose.

I grabbed Anna Dressed in Blood after reading Andi's glowing review. I brought it home, I read the summary, I put it on the shelf (as I am wont to do) and then when it came close to the point where I had to read it, I got started. And here's what happens- 75 pages into the book Anna shows up. She's terrible and beautiful and powerful and scary, and I closed the book to read it NOT at bedtime. Somehow, I managed to check a ghost story out of the library, and then was surprised when frightening things happened. (Huh? Yeah. Me too.) Despite the fear, I returned to it and finish it within a few days. Anna is still scary, but she's also remarkably human, and likable, and the more you know about her, the more sympathy you have for the ghost.

Cas starts the book as a bit of an arrogant jerk. He shows up at the new school with no plans to make friends, and is not at all surprised to gain the attention of several girls. As the book progresses, we learn that he's really not that outstanding physically, and you start to wonder where the initial magnetism comes from.  Despite his desire not to make friends, and his history of working alone, Things Happen that cause him to need the assistance of other people, and we find ourselves with a bit of a Scooby Gang. Thankfully, they are all likable enough, and aside from having a high percentage of weird names, believable enough. (If you can get past the idea of a 17 year old out to rid the world of ghosts, with his peers as sidekicks. Which, hello, Buffy.)

Overall, a great story and I'm looking forward to the next book in the series, Girl of Nightmares . Once past that initial scene, the intensity of the ghost scenes drops a bit, so don't let it being a horror story put you off completely. There are a few other disturbing things, that I find I can't share without spoiling it for you, so if you're prone to nightmares maybe skip it. If you're a Stephen King fan, you're probably ok for this one too.

You can find Kendare Blake online here, on twitter, and on Facebook.