This book is a quick and easy read that I plowed through in about a day. The premise is very interesting, the writing is decent, and the main character isn't entirely unpleasant. However, the ending is very disappointing and the entire book just seems to fall flat. ( )

I don't think this is a young adult book. It's good when you look at it from the point of a young teenager. Unfortunately, not for me. ( )

I just can't. This reads like a MG novel and is not even slightly comparable to Zarr or Chbosky.

A good story that somehow became choppy long about mid-way. There was a great deal of frustration with disjointed sentences leading to no where.

Two girls who have been together since babyhood, one healthy, one born with a congenital heart condition. Now, in teen aged years, the reality that Kim's days are numbered is hitting Emma strongly. So close are they that there were not a lot of others in their lives. Emma is a nerdy, sensitive child. After Kim died, she slips into depression and is obsessed with trying to hear from her beloved friend.

Good things about this book: The story line is good
Things that kept me from giving a high mark: Disjointed, rambling text that didn't allow the reader to feel the emotions of the girls. ( )

Emmy's best friend, Kim, had an uncorrectable congenital heart problem, and, knowing she would probably die young, she became utterly obsessed with the idea of coming back after death to communicate with Emmy. Then she died, and Emmy hasn't seen her again. She has, however, started seeing entirely the wrong dead people.

I have mixed feelings about this one. I like the premise. It's got a few poignant moments, and it captures the experience of being a teenager reasonably well. But I found the style kind of off-putting. It's really simplified and choppy. Which maybe isn't that uncommon in YA novels, but this one takes it to the next level, with lots and lots of very simple sentences and paragraphs that never seem to be more than one or two sentences long. Hell, the first few chapters are only one sentence long. I'm sure this is a deliberate stylistic choice, and there is an extent to which it does work to capture the sense of a very young and unsophisticated narrative voice. But I couldn't help finding it a bit irritating after a while.

I also couldn't help thinking that this style serves to make it look like there's a lot more content here than there actually is. I'm not sure how the exact word count compares to what you'd normally expect from your average 346-page novel, but it's obviously very low. And it feels low. Low, and slight. I'd say there's maybe a novella's worth of story here, at best. ( )