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Notes From Ghost Town (2013)

by Kate Ellison(Favorite Author)

3.63 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1606842641 (ISBN13: 9781606842645)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

EgmontUSA

review 1: Stern has been Olivia's best friend since she was 4, but her feelings for him have grown deeper. She goes away to school after a disastrous encounter, thinking that she has plenty of time to fix things, but within a week, Stern is dead and her mother has been arrested for his murder. Fast forward 10 months. Olivia's life is in shambles. She has lost her ability to see colors, she has flunked out of art school, her relationship with her father is strained, and--oh yes, she begins to see Stern's ghost. Olivia is terrified that she is descending into "the gray space" as her mother describes her own schizophrenic episodes. Or is Stern possibly real? She very much wants to believe the latter, because Stern is telling her that her mother is innocent and that he needs her to prov... moree it. This is a story about forever love, about loss and grief, and about dealing with the fear and possibility of mental illness. Maybe even the inevitability of it. Olivia is not always likeable, but it was hard NOT to like her, nonetheless. A heartbreaking and beautiful story.
review 2: I'm going to give this one 3 stars, because while the plot was way too typical and transparent (I checked off my "whodunit" box with confidence within the first 2 chapters), I see great potential in Ellison as an author. Her language was lovely and strange; her main character ornery, intriguing, and just a little bit mad. The romance between Austin and Olivia could have used a little fuller commitment just for believability's sake, but the scenes themselves were atmospheric and touching. I was worried that the colorless world descriptions would wear on me before long, but Ellison somehow found a way to keep her grey tones fresh and new each time, and the varied settings of Miami were to die for. I definitely wanted more scenes with ghost Stern and Olivia--the author had the potential to really take the sorrow and the oddity of her characters' predicament to the next level there, but she didn't make it intense at all, just adolescent. I liked the thread of art as a soul-anchoring and cleansing escape from the hardships of life, and I enjoyed the simple sweetness of supporting Wynn and her mother more than I thought I would. In the end, I think Ellison is a talented creative writer who needs to experiment and learn some in the world of plots; the winding, intricate, bizarre threads they can follow out, and how to gather most (but never all) back together in the end and close the stitch. less

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