Hmm. I've HEARD from different reputable sources that this book is like reluctant reader candy. It hasn't circulated much here, but I'm planning to booktalk it with some other ghost books and see if it goes.

It was a quick read, and I liked it okay, but it wasn't that satisfying for me personally? Like Chuy gets stabbed for basically no reason, and then finds the guy who did it, and I thought maybe it would be like a ghost mystery where he solves his own murder, but, spoiler, nothing really happens there, which I found sort of unsatisfying. Is that the point? Like sometimes your murder goes unsolved and you better just accept that before you fade from this earthly plane? Also the love-at-first-sight thing with the only other ghost he meets felt kinda weak to me.

The bilingual ghost narrator is cool, and I wish we had more overall diversity in the YA ghost/horror genre.

I'd already read versions of a lot of these online, and I might not have picked up the book except that library book club is reading it, but overall, fairly interesting and thought-provoking. The most powerful chapter is definitely the one about the Three Strikes law. (You can read a little bit about that here.) It's not all necessarily groundbreaking, but easily digestible and thought-provoking. [b:Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything|1202|Freakonomics A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Freakonomics, #1)|Steven D. Levitt|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327909092s/1202.jpg|5397]-y, Malcolm Gladwell-y stuff.

THIS IS SO WEIRD, I LOVE IT.

I loved the audiobook of [b:Cold Cereal|11595220|Cold Cereal|Adam Rex|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1321973206s/11595220.jpg|16537151] but apparently the rest of the trilogy hasn't been recorded, so I read the print copy. Which was cool too, because it has illustrations! (Illustrations of awesome black pixies with Afros!) Also one of the discs of the audiobook was jacked up so reading this made me realize that I had missed some fairly significant plot twists, but I felt like I was able to get up to speed pretty quickly.

I think these books would make fun family read-alouds because there are a lot of references that will probably fly over a lot of kids' heads, such as the introduction of Sir Richard Starkey of the Quarrymen, as a character. But I also think they're fun enough that kids will dig them even if they don't get everything. (And then maybe one day when they're older they'll realize, oh, I read Beatles RPF fanfiction when I was a kid, weird.)

Hahaha, my manager told me I had to read this because the character Amelia reminded me of her, which I get cuz she's a quirky book-lover with a broken ankle. Anyway, yeah, it's a super cute romance novel for book-lovers. It's kind of twee but I still cried at the end.

It was interesting reading this right after [b:Seconds|20442885|Seconds|Bryan Lee O'Malley|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1399502819s/20442885.jpg|17378014], because they're both about late twentysomething/early thirtysomethings getting some kind of do-over. I loved them both, because I guess I'm at that stage of my life. EVERYTHING'S FINE DON'T LOOK AT ME

I loved Georgie as a protagonist. Except for the failing marriage part, I related to her very strongly.

The magic phone part was kind of... IDEK if it was necessary, to be honest, but also I don't care.

I totally dug this weirdo trilogy. I read some reviews saying that there was too much going on and it was kind of hard to follow, which I think is probably true but I think my brain was happy to keep going through and didn't bother getting hung up on all the details of time travel and magical Macguffins. I could see it being frustrating for more detail-oriented fantasy readers.

But it's SO FUNNY though.

Oh my GOSH I loved this book SO MUCH. For me it's a 10 hour roundtrip drive to my parents' house, so whenever I go home I try to do an audiobook. But it's such a flat, boring drive that I need something really good to hold my attention or else I get bored and switch to music. This was GREAT, the kind of audiobook that had me anxiously putting the next disc in as soon as I could. Really funny narration--I especially loved her voice for Bee, the teenage narrator.

When I saw that Maria Semple had written for Arrested Development I thought, that makes total sense. This reminded me of Arrested Development in the best way--larger than life characters who are also very human, insane plot twists that some how all come back together at the end. And it's SO funny and well-observed.

This is a smart, moving contemporary fantasy. I guess I don't have a lot to say about it, but I liked it and checked out the next one.

I'm still into this series. Collins is so great at exploring the ambiguities and complexities of war. This is less graphic and perhaps less overtly political than the Hunger Games, but no less complex. I'd especially recommend it to kids who want to read Hunger Games but are really too young for it, or for fans of Warriors or other talking animal warrior-type books.

But also for adults.

oh yeah I finished this and I still have... a lot of questions. They will be addressed as soon as Kait and I get our podcast up and running.

http://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-02-theodore-boone-kid-lawyer/