Reviews with content warning for Car accident - Funeral Girl

A lovely exploration of loss, grief, and belief through the eye of a teenage girl who can talk to ghosts. Beautifully written with asexual and nonbinary rep.
Carry a tissue box around with you for this one.

Content Warnings

patricktreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Funeral Girl is a very dark and reflective work about anxiety, understanding mortality, and depression. It was a little darker than I realized but it really fit the way the story was being told. I really enjoyed Georgia and Milo’s connection, and appreciated their growth together.

It makes me think of They Both Die at the End meets Dear Even Hansen.

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sarahbythebook's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

2.5

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an audio-ARC of this book!

16-year-old Georgia Richter is not your average high school student. Any given week, she can be found working at her family's funeral home. The only problem with that? Georgia is terrified of death. And she can talk to ghosts. When fellow student Milo D'Angelo dies in a car accident, Georgia begins to spiral, cutting off her friends and trying to fulfill the final wish of a boy she barely knew.

Funeral girl is not a happy book, and unfortunately for me, it did not read well. Part of this issue is my own experience with what the main character goes through, and another part can be attributed to the fact that this book is aimed at a lower age range than I'm currently in. I still enjoy YA fiction, but this reads on the younger end of that scale if you look past the cursing.

My main issue is with this book is the main character. From the very beginning, I found her frustrating. She knew that the things she did-- with the ghosts and with how she treated Ami-- were wrong on at least some level. She know the ghosts are scared at being awoken. She takes it upon herself despite that, to bring them back to ask questions and try to quiet her own fear of death. She then justifies this by trying to fulfill their final wish. What is a 16-year-old going to do for people who have lived full lives? It came across as unbearably arrogant.

Add to that her creepy obsession with Milo upon his death, and I was past caring about Georgia or her family. The girl clearly needed therapy. Having lost a sibling in a car accident, Georgia's attitude towards death and dying and the way others grieve made me angry more than anything else. She lacked the respect for the grieving processes of others and for the dead themselves. This is where I think my age gets in the way of any chance of enjoying this book. Would I have responded similarly or understood better when I was 16? Probably. Does it drive me crazy now? Absolutely.

Overall, I'm sure this book will work for lots of people, and it had potential to be a really interesting exploration of how we cope with the inescapable reality of death and dying. Funeral Girl just didn't work for me.

CW: death, embalming, funerals, car accident, underage drinking

Content Warnings

debussy's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

(This book is not horror in the slightest. It's a contemporary fantasy, with an emphasis on contemporary focusing on themes surrounding anxiety over death.)

Initially I was very excited to pick up Funeral Girl based on its themes and the setting--everything about it seemed right up my alley, but I was ultimately disappointed by the book itself. Our MC, Georgia, has a deep-seated anxiety about death, which is a problem given she lives in a funeral home. When her grandmother dies when she's 13, she discovers she has the ability to summon the ghosts of the dead people she touches, leading her to touch all the dead bodies in the funeral home, chatting up the ghosts for a few minutes, and then fashioning a scrapbook of mementos from these interactions. All fine. The problem begins when Milo, a boy from school, dies in a hit and run. Georgia immediately becomes obsessed with his death--crying over this boy (whom she doesn't know) and letting his fate dictate every waking moment to the point that she starts to ignore her only friend. You could say she does this because her anxiety is that bad, but the book spends so much time throwing shade at people who make a show over grieving over people they don't know that it all seems...weird. Very weird.

Ultimately, Milo's body winds up at Georgia's funeral home and she touches him, summons his ghost, and Milo doesn't want to go to the great beyond, obviously, so he winds up sleeping on her floor and things start to unravel. He asks her to help his parents (how? she doesn't ask.) and so Georgia starts lying to Milo's parents in order to insert herself into their lives, which is also deeply weird. Then her friendship starts to fall apart, not to even mention the book keeps hinting at this falling out Georgia had with her own brother and previous best friend (it takes it until 64% of the way in to finally, blessedly, TELL US what the falling out was over, and only after Georgia has to call her on the rocks best friend to remind her what the something even is, which...okay...). Why keep something that is so pertinent to why this character is the way she is a secret was maddening to me, since I never could figure out what Georgia's deal was. Sure, her grandmother died, but I was never quite sure of how close they were to begin with, and I certainly didn't pick up on any resounding effects of this great betrayal of her ex-best friend. The book even minimizes the damage of this betrayal after the fact because it was when they were 13 and who remembers or cares what happens when you're 13 (according to this book).

So, generally, I had a big disconnect with the main character here and I didn't particularly care for how this big secret was dealt with (why was it a secret?!). Things seemed to happen for the sake of the plot, not because it made sense for the character(s), and I found the whole thing underwhelming. Additionally, the writing was plain and simplistic, with the characters and their actions bordering on too middle grade for the young adult audience this book is marketed toward. I would say it's definitely a book for younger readers (13 and under), if you can overlook the sprinkle of curse words. Ultimately, this fell flat for me.

Content Warnings

librarygirlreads's review

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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