Ghost Girl, by Tonya Hurley
Hurley, Tonya (2008). Ghostgirl. NY: Little, Brown. 326 pages.
The tag lines for a story like this just write themselves (and, of course, are used to death in Hurley’s Ghostgirl): Dying to be popular? Feeling invisible? What if you did die and could become invisible? High school nobody Charlotte Usher arrives on the first day of school with a plan to become popular and to attract her crush, the best-looking boy at school and known paramour of the most popular girl. When an accident involving a gummi bear causes Charlotte to depart the land of the living, she continues to occupy the Earthly plane and uses her ghostly advantages to get close to the boy she was denied in death.
The book started well and, really, could have gone two ways. The first chapter set-up led me to predict either a metaphoric death for Charlotte or a real one; in either case, the slightly snarky exegetic narration seemed like a good fit. When Charlotte really did die in the novel, it all went downhill for me. The character’s sudden introduction to “ghost school,” known as “Dead Ed.,” the fact that ghost-Charlotte could be seen by the most popular girl at school’s sister, the willingness of said sister to allow Charlotte to posses her body while the sister flew around the spiritual plane (what?), and the lack of consistent rules related to the physical and the ghost worlds really blew this whole thing out of the water for me. I’m all for a good, smart-alecky, horror spoof, but this one didn’t even adhere to the rules of the genre it attempted to spoof.
Good design and brief nineteenth-century chapter prefaces were not enough to save this novel from itself. I think that, really, this book is intended to promote a movie of the same name and scope, itself written and possibly directed by the book’s author. See Ghostgirl for more information.
Posted on May 22, 2008 at 10:15 am
Do you like Tim Burton movies? John Hughes? That’s the kind of story this is. It’s cool.
Posted on May 22, 2008 at 11:02 am
I can see the parallels between Ghostgirl and Tim Burton or John Hughes, but I still don’t think that the book worked as well as the movies by these classic directors do. Like I said, I was more annoyed by the dubious and unexplained intersection between the worlds of the dead and the living. Case in point: why is dead Charlotte still using a computer?
Posted on July 8, 2008 at 12:16 pm
She is using a computer because she can’t let go of the living! did you even read the book? I think you’re too literal to get this book. It’s a great read and I loved the characters and the world.
Posted on July 8, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Maybe I am being too literal here; however, I just can’t wrap my head around ghostly computer use. To me, this blurs the lines of credibility, even for a supernatural story.
Posted on January 22, 2009 at 6:30 pm
i i <3 this book with all my beloved haert tonya hurley is in my mind one on the greatest authors ever!
Posted on January 22, 2009 at 6:30 pm
i i <3 this book with all my beloved haert tonya hurley is in my mind one on the greatest authors ever!
Posted on June 3, 2009 at 12:28 am
I loved this book and I hear the Ghostgirl Homecoming, the next one in the series is even better!
Posted on May 22, 2008 at 10:13 am
Hi. I got this book at BEA and I LOVE IT! It’s so refreshing and it keeps your attention. It’s not a horror spoof. I think you missed the point of the book. It’s clever. I just saw where Publishers Weekly included it in their summer staff picks and it is the only YA novel on the list. It’s very witty, I agree with them.