When 19-year-old Rowena surprises the burglars who have broken into her neighbour’s house, she doesn’t live to regret it. Not that Rowena realises this straight away. The attack is so sudden, the falling down the stairs and the cracking of bone as she hits the ground so unexpected, that it isn’t until she becomes aware she’s watching the paramedics trying to resuscitate her that Rowena understands she is actually dead. What follows is confusion followed by anger followed by a sense of sadness that there’s so much she didn’t get to do in her short earthly lifetime, including experiencing her first kiss. And then there’s the afterlife to contend with and the fact that until she comes to terms with what’s happened to her and works out what she should do next, Rowena will never find peace…
There are so many stories about spectres who are anchored to the earth by unfinished business that they’ve practically become a genre of their own. From Ghost to The Sixth Sense to The Lovely Bones (okay, two of those are movies but you know what I mean) there’s very little left to say about how the newly deceased should come to terms with the afterlife, and Katrina Mountfort’s new YA novel doesn’t really add anything new to the party. However, what it does give us is a surprisingly romantic and good-natured little trip behind the veil that’s an entertaining read and short enough not to outstay its welcome, and Rowena’s ‘first-hand account from beyond the grave’ includes some interesting and neatly thought-through details about both the trauma, banality and occasional ridiculousness of shuffling off this mortal coil. She’s a compelling heroine with a pre-death story that could have been so weighed down with tragedy and schmaltz the reader would have instantly suffered tooth decay – in her brief life Rowena’s mother dies, she suffers facial scars following an accident, and her best friend is suffering from a terrible illness – but Mountfort’s writing (mostly) sidesteps sentimentality and instead gives us a young protagonist we can believe in both as a doomed heroine and a maybe-doomed earthbound spirit. And the flashes of humour and frequent pop-culture name-drops work well too. The only big minus is that, if you’re looking for a ghost story that will give you chills, this isn’t the one. It’s much more The Fault in Our Stars than The Woman in Black. But, if you’re in the mood for something different, The Ghost in You is a nice diversion that might even leave you pondering about what lies ahead…
THE GHOST IN YOU / AUTHOR: KATRINA MOUNTFORT / PUBLISHER: ELSEWHEN PRESS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
