I originally bought this book because it was one of five in the Cozumel airport that was in English. It was either this or The Shack, but we have a copy of that at home, so I opted for this. Plus, it was fun to buy a book with a sticker on the front that said $169 (pesos)!

Turns out it's the middle book in a series. I didn't hate it, it was okay, but I didn't like it enough to bother with either the first or the third book...

If I knew a 13 year old girl, I bet she'd LOVE it and I'd give it to her.

(Donated it to my local library.) ( )

When I read the first Ghostgirl book, someone asked me afterwards what I thought of it. I said, "It's one of the worst books I ever liked." Unsurprisingly, I felt the same way about this sequel, though it was even weaker than the first. It's easy to point out a lot of flaws, (and I will,) but for reasons I'm not real sure about, I enjoyed it, and will probably read the final book in the series sometime.
What's wrong with it? The cast of characters is almost exclusively high school girls, and all but a couple of them are dead girls. There is one living high school boy as well, Damon. Most of these girls share the same profound character weaknesses. They obsess over popularity, and are irritatingly catty. The afterlife in Hurley's Ghostgirl universe, follows its own set of rules about how things work, but she never makes it quite clear what these rules are. Groups of the dead teens are expected to go "places" and do things that are a bit confusing or meaningless to the reader. Hurley's writing style can also be irritating. She needs to learn the value of the simple word "said." The book is filled with dialogue, but after nearly every "said" there is an adverb, and it is tiresome. She said, irritatingly, annoyingly, distractedly, snidely, proudly, skittishly, etc. Charlotte, the main character, is dreadfully wishy-washy, as she was in the first book. Petula is presented as a cheerleader (alive, but just barely through most of this book) who seems to be the most popular girl ever, in spite of the fact that she is narcissistic, snotty, shallow, and mean. All in all, someone so horrid that nobody would like her, no matter how physically attractive she was. It is easier to believe the complex mechanics of the afterlife in this book than it is to believe that anyone likes Petula.
The plot: Charlotte finds that the next stage in the afterlife, having graduated "Dead-Ed" in the first book, is manning a phone bank, where calls come in from troubled teens who are still alive. What the kids on the phone tell them, is what they hear their conscience say. Meanwhile, in the world of the living, Scarlet (Petula's younger sister) and Damon (Scarlet's boyfriend - Petula's ex-boyfriend) are trying to figure out how to save Petula's life when she is in a coma on the brink of death. Scarlet decides the only way is with the help of Charlotte, and Scarlet takes off into the world of the dead to find her. Then she, Charlotte, and Charlotte's roommate Maddy (who has her own questionable motives), go off to find Peutla's soul to guide it back to her body. It's all quite silly.
I honestly can't put my finger on why I enjoyed these books at all, but for some reason I did. ( )

This is the follow-up to Ghostgirl. I didn't care for that, so I'm not really sure what I expected from this one.
I liked it even less than the first one, even with Parker Posey reading to me. ( )

The kids from Dead Ed have moved onto a call center where their job is to be callers "inner concious", the voice that argues with them when they have make a decision. Unfortunately, no one is calling Charlotte's line and no one seems to have time for her except her new room mate Maddy who's motives are just a little bit suspect. Back at Hawthorne, Petula is in a coma and Scarlet knows she needs to help her and that she can't do it without Scarlett. This book had a more serious tone then the previous book and continued to focus on the ideas of living life to the fullest and self-esteem. ( )

The kids from Dead Ed have moved onto a call center where their job is to be callers "inner concious", the voice that argues with them when they have make a decision. Unfortunately, no one is calling Charlotte's line and no one seems to have time for her except her new room mate Maddy who's motives are just a little bit suspect. Back at Hawthorne, Petula is in a coma and Scarlet knows she needs to help her and that she can't do it without Scarlett. This book had a more serious tone then the previous book and continued to focus on the ideas of living life to the fullest and self-esteem. ( )