This book is AMAZING.  The tag line? YES! All of this "be yourself"ness is great, but like, who *is* that? I connect with this book so deeply.

Ghost stories aren't usually my thing, but that's because the ghosts are so often meant to be scary, or some sort of penance. Or if they're good ghosts, they represent some afterlife that I'm supposed to feel comforted by. This is just an "OK, in this world, there are ghosts." No different from "this world has magic" or aliens or whatever.

I love it. Some things I love:

Spoiler

p. 5: NAILS my response to my reaction when my grandfather died: "There's sadness, but it's whirling around outside of me. Like a hurricane of grief, and I'm the dry, unmoving eye."

p. 62: Trying to picture myself as a teenage girl is like staring at the sun, too bright to see, and it hurts".  No, what hurts is how good of a writer Lukoff is.

p. 117: "But those books never tell you how to figure out what your self is. They assume that you know already, and are pretending to be someone else for a while to fit in." This book is fucking me up in the best of ways. Lukoff really raised the bar for MG trans rep.

p. 136: "But trans people are their genders. I just ... want. Something. Which is different." This line is subtle genius for trans kids to encounter.

p. 154: If you're going to have a hurricane on stage in Act I, it needs to go off in Act II.p.

172: Five single-stall restrooms evenly spaced throughout the building. I would 100% make out with this detail.

p. 177: "I haven't really imagined myself from the outside since coming out as trans." Get out of my head, Lukoff! I used to refer to myself in the third person in high school. I stopped doing it in college once I started questioning my pronouns.

Author's Note: LOVE!!! I can completely hear you reading it.

I can't say enough good things about this book. I didn't know a story could be on the edge of your seat creepy and so gentle and loving at the same time. This is an absolute must-read empathy builder for kids as they prepare to enter their middle school years, and if you're an adult and you read only one kids' fiction title this year, let it be this one.

A heartwarming ghost story about grief and coming out that left me with the warm fuzzies. A MUST read.