While this wasn't a bad book, I only started enjoying it at 70% on, so I unfortunately can't rate it any higher. I'm picky about my historical fiction but the issue is that I haven't read enough to know what I like and don't like exactly, but this book just didn't work for me in the beginning, and the revelations started coming a little too fast and a little too late.

Overall I enjoyed the storytelling and writing of this book, and the concept of having a ghost narrate the life of the living is an interesting one. Even when I wasn't necessarily enjoying the book it wasn't hard to stay engaged and following the story, as the writing was easy to follow yet compelling! I most likely will look into other books by this author because of that, even if this specific one wasn't fully for me.

I think the main issue overall for me was how the parallel storylines only meshed together in terms of content/themes, rather than in how the stories were told to the reader. It honestly felt like the two stories were battling for dominance for most of the book, and it overall felt very back and forth rather than two complementary stories running parallel to each other. It was all a bit too much, especially when the twists for both stories were being revealed at the exact same time. I didn't necessarily have trouble keeping the two apart, but I found myself only fully engaged with one at a time, losing interest quickly in the other. Generally, this story was Frankie's, and it made the more ghostly tales of Pearl drag on for me, and only really started affecting me when we hit 70%. All in all, I think the story could have made similar thematical statements by focusing on only one of the girls, and it would've probably been stronger for it.

I didn't hate this, it just didn't grab me early on and ended up suffering for it. I did like it in the end though, but I feel my rating has to be fair to the book as a whole, and I did feel tempted to DNF it around 40%.