(For young adults) Brenna is a busy young woman--she can see and hear dead people; she has an annoying (and unexplained habit) of sleeping in graveyards; her relationship with her mother is as frosty as the Arctic tundra; her grandmother has just passed away and she has to m...ove back to her hometown to settle the affairs; and, oh yeah, her first love is a potentially psychotic killer that Brenna witnessed cradling a blood-soaked murder victim. Sound like a lot on one girl's plate? That's just in the first chapter! When I started reading, I actually thought this was the second or even third book in a series. Too much is explained in the first chapter as just a nod to the reader. What happened to Brenna prior to the story even starting is the real story here, the one you'll piece together gradually but much too slowly. Because even though Brenna's past is thrown at you too quickly, the pace is very slow in the beginning. I wondered where the plot could be going and was confused on which of these too many problems was supposed to be solved. Brenna herself is a bit of a static caricature of a teen, rather than a real one. She has too many issues with clothes, attitude, tics---she exhausted me. Her character would have been much stronger if only one of her many issues was a focus rather than all of them. However, with all those things being said, hang in there! Like a late start in the Kentucky Derby, this novel picks up pace and races to a satisfying conclusion. Most of the loose ends were tied up nicely and what started out as a seemingly impossible plot problem was solved in a way that was both believable and heart-warming.
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