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3.38 AVERAGE
3.38 AVERAGE
Interesting concept - dead people trying to solve their own murders but this is nothing like Lovely Bones - very light read and much teenage angst
This one started out pretty good, but the last third of the book just went further and further downhill. The conclusion of the murder they were solving was, in my opinion, absurd and then there was a few lines at the end that made me roll my eyes.
The entire book is about a young, murdered, teen trying to solve her murder as a ghost so she can get her "key" to a door that leads to the afterlife. Until she does this she is stuck in limbo. So at the end, when of course the murder is solved, she has a supernatural experience (okay the whole book is a supernatural experience, but this was a new one) and then looks down to see a key in her hand and has this thought... "It wasn't just any key. It was my key. Somewhere inside I instinctively knew it." Well, duh! You have spent the entire last 333 pages waiting for your key and now you have one in your hand, what other key would it be...seriously?
I just don't like when teen books tell you the obvious and treat you like you're too stupid to pick this one major thing up. I think the readers could have guessed it was her key, just like she should have without needing her instincts to tell her it. (insert eye roll!)
Yes, just one line in a book can make me dislike it. Oh, that and the fact that it seems like the start to a series...a ghost detective series.
The entire book is about a young, murdered, teen trying to solve her murder as a ghost so she can get her "key" to a door that leads to the afterlife. Until she does this she is stuck in limbo. So at the end, when of course the murder is solved, she has a supernatural experience (okay the whole book is a supernatural experience, but this was a new one) and then looks down to see a key in her hand and has this thought... "It wasn't just any key. It was my key. Somewhere inside I instinctively knew it." Well, duh! You have spent the entire last 333 pages waiting for your key and now you have one in your hand, what other key would it be...seriously?
I just don't like when teen books tell you the obvious and treat you like you're too stupid to pick this one major thing up. I think the readers could have guessed it was her key, just like she should have without needing her instincts to tell her it. (insert eye roll!)
Yes, just one line in a book can make me dislike it. Oh, that and the fact that it seems like the start to a series...a ghost detective series.
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It was a really good book but I hated the ending.
Charlotte didn't have a good day. She was late for school, forgot about a chemistry test, collided in the hallway with the school's "head cheerleader/head b*tch extraordianaire" and to top it all off at the end of the day she was killed by a train.
After being pushed in front of a subway train, Charlotte wakes up in a hotel...for the dead. She is informed by the other occupants of the Attesa Hotel that like them, she was murdered. The only way out of the hotel and through the Big Red Door is to solve your murder. The Dead Girl's Detective Agency is make up of Nancy, Lorna and Tess who have not moved on to the other side for various reasons. With the help from the Agency - and a little extra help from Attesa's only male resident, Edison - Charlotte sets out to find who wanted her dead.
Could it have been her best friend who had been growing distant? The evil head cheerleader? Or could it have even been her boyfriend - who Charlotte thought was her perfect match? With a high school full of potential suspects, Charlotte and the Dead Girl's Detective Agency have their work cut out for them.
This book was a cute read and it really did keep me guessing. Unlike other "who did it?" books, I did not have this one figured out midway through. There is enough romance, paranormal, and mystery to appeal to many readers.
After being pushed in front of a subway train, Charlotte wakes up in a hotel...for the dead. She is informed by the other occupants of the Attesa Hotel that like them, she was murdered. The only way out of the hotel and through the Big Red Door is to solve your murder. The Dead Girl's Detective Agency is make up of Nancy, Lorna and Tess who have not moved on to the other side for various reasons. With the help from the Agency - and a little extra help from Attesa's only male resident, Edison - Charlotte sets out to find who wanted her dead.
Could it have been her best friend who had been growing distant? The evil head cheerleader? Or could it have even been her boyfriend - who Charlotte thought was her perfect match? With a high school full of potential suspects, Charlotte and the Dead Girl's Detective Agency have their work cut out for them.
This book was a cute read and it really did keep me guessing. Unlike other "who did it?" books, I did not have this one figured out midway through. There is enough romance, paranormal, and mystery to appeal to many readers.
this book was so good. it have the best ending i have read in a long time. it had you guess in the whole time.
This and other reviews can be found on Reading Between Classes
Cover Impressions: This cover feels very contemporary fiction to me. There is nothing about the cover image that feels supernatural and only the title hints at the paranormal elements that are crucial to the story. I do not feel this one would stand out on a shelf.
The Gist: Having been pushed in front of a subway, Charlotte wakes to find herself in a swanky hotel and in the company of the Dead Girls Detective Agency. Together they must find Charlotte's murderer in order to give her a chance to move on.
Review: This was a very tough read for me and I am surprised that I managed to make it to the end. The Dead Girls Detective Agency had a fun and interesting premise, but the writing, characters and plot were lackluster at best.
From the very first chapter, this novel featured A LOT of dialogue. I get it, Charlotte had to be introduced into this new world and some groundwork had to be laid. However, there had to be a way to accomplish this that did not involve pages and pages of info-dumping with very little in the way of comic relief and no action whatsoever. For the first half of the book, we are forced to endure endless explanations of the rules. What the rules are, who made the rules, how to bend the rules, what happens when you break the rules. This is interrupted occasionally while Charlotte moons over the boyfriend that she left behind, realizes that he is a selfish twit, and then is informed by her ghost-mates that she gets 9 chances to break the rules - so let's go have some fun! Seriously? All that time spent building the world around these rules and then we frivilously toss them out the window so that we can drop in on Beyonce and Jay-Z? That feels cheap to me and makes me angry that I had to sit through Ghost 101 when none of it actually mattered.
The writing featured a great deal of teen-speak that did not feel genuine. In all my years of teaching, I have never heard an actual, honest-to-goodness teenager use an acronym in a sentence. Yet, these teens drop OMG's like a middle-aged parent trying to be "cool" with their kid's friends. The author also chose to engage in one of my serious pet peeves in YA: name-dropping. I know it is tempting. You want your book to be relevant, you want your readers to be able to relate to the characters: "She likes Simple Plan? OMG! I love Simple Plan - we could be BFF's!!" In reality, in stinks of desperation.
The plot of The Dead Girls Detective Agency crawled. I found myself skimming pages, just waiting to get to some action. There were some higher points, like when the girls possessed the cheerleaders (aptly named the Tornahos) but even those did not live up the the potential for hilarity. There was very little in the way of action. We had a few tense moments where the killer is revealed and a few more when Tess and Edison's connection is revealed. I was pretty disappointed at the choice of murderer. I am never a fan when the killer is revealed as being someone to whom we are barely introduced and, in this case, doesn't even warrant a name.
Despite my obvious issues with plot and writing, Cox could have pulled me back in with some kick-ass characters. Alas, this was not the case. The characters felt very cookie-cutter to me: the sweet one, the nerdy one, the fashionista, the bitch, the slutty cheerleaders, the sleazy ex-boyfriend, the new love interest. All of them acted as expected. They didn't do anything exciting and they didn't have any clever, funny or interesting dialogue. Charlotte was incredibly boring, naive and gullible. I was also bothered by the fact that she described herself as a prolific reader - yet she didn't speak like one. At one point she even says "And one time, she helped me with a Shakespeare assignment, because I'd just finished reading Harry Potter and kept getting confused between Halmet and Hagrid and it was completely messing up my essay on why he had issues." Seriously? You claim to read a vast and varied array of books and yet you have trouble distinguishing between two characters? I just couldn't relate to a girl that 1) dumped her best friend the minute she found a boyfriend 2) talked about the boyfriend non-stop for the majority of the book and 3) didn't use her special new ghostly powers to do some serious damage to the slutty cheerleaders and the boyfriend who hooked up with three of them within a few days of her funeral.
The Dead Girls Detective Agency just didn't work for me. I was expecting a fluffy and humorous read, but this one just didn't have enough substance to hold it together.
Teaching/Parental Notes:
Age: 16 and up
Gender: Female
Sex: Kissing, talk of "hooking up"
Violence: Murder - pushed in front of a subway
Inappropriate Language: Bitch, Pissed, Ho, Asshole, Slut, Whore
Substance Use/Abuse: None
Cover Impressions: This cover feels very contemporary fiction to me. There is nothing about the cover image that feels supernatural and only the title hints at the paranormal elements that are crucial to the story. I do not feel this one would stand out on a shelf.
The Gist: Having been pushed in front of a subway, Charlotte wakes to find herself in a swanky hotel and in the company of the Dead Girls Detective Agency. Together they must find Charlotte's murderer in order to give her a chance to move on.
Review: This was a very tough read for me and I am surprised that I managed to make it to the end. The Dead Girls Detective Agency had a fun and interesting premise, but the writing, characters and plot were lackluster at best.
From the very first chapter, this novel featured A LOT of dialogue. I get it, Charlotte had to be introduced into this new world and some groundwork had to be laid. However, there had to be a way to accomplish this that did not involve pages and pages of info-dumping with very little in the way of comic relief and no action whatsoever. For the first half of the book, we are forced to endure endless explanations of the rules. What the rules are, who made the rules, how to bend the rules, what happens when you break the rules. This is interrupted occasionally while Charlotte moons over the boyfriend that she left behind, realizes that he is a selfish twit, and then is informed by her ghost-mates that she gets 9 chances to break the rules - so let's go have some fun! Seriously? All that time spent building the world around these rules and then we frivilously toss them out the window so that we can drop in on Beyonce and Jay-Z? That feels cheap to me and makes me angry that I had to sit through Ghost 101 when none of it actually mattered.
The writing featured a great deal of teen-speak that did not feel genuine. In all my years of teaching, I have never heard an actual, honest-to-goodness teenager use an acronym in a sentence. Yet, these teens drop OMG's like a middle-aged parent trying to be "cool" with their kid's friends. The author also chose to engage in one of my serious pet peeves in YA: name-dropping. I know it is tempting. You want your book to be relevant, you want your readers to be able to relate to the characters: "She likes Simple Plan? OMG! I love Simple Plan - we could be BFF's!!" In reality, in stinks of desperation.
The plot of The Dead Girls Detective Agency crawled. I found myself skimming pages, just waiting to get to some action. There were some higher points, like when the girls possessed the cheerleaders (aptly named the Tornahos) but even those did not live up the the potential for hilarity. There was very little in the way of action. We had a few tense moments where the killer is revealed and a few more when Tess and Edison's connection is revealed. I was pretty disappointed at the choice of murderer. I am never a fan when the killer is revealed as being someone to whom we are barely introduced and, in this case, doesn't even warrant a name.
Despite my obvious issues with plot and writing, Cox could have pulled me back in with some kick-ass characters. Alas, this was not the case. The characters felt very cookie-cutter to me: the sweet one, the nerdy one, the fashionista, the bitch, the slutty cheerleaders, the sleazy ex-boyfriend, the new love interest. All of them acted as expected. They didn't do anything exciting and they didn't have any clever, funny or interesting dialogue. Charlotte was incredibly boring, naive and gullible. I was also bothered by the fact that she described herself as a prolific reader - yet she didn't speak like one. At one point she even says "And one time, she helped me with a Shakespeare assignment, because I'd just finished reading Harry Potter and kept getting confused between Halmet and Hagrid and it was completely messing up my essay on why he had issues." Seriously? You claim to read a vast and varied array of books and yet you have trouble distinguishing between two characters? I just couldn't relate to a girl that 1) dumped her best friend the minute she found a boyfriend 2) talked about the boyfriend non-stop for the majority of the book and 3) didn't use her special new ghostly powers to do some serious damage to the slutty cheerleaders and the boyfriend who hooked up with three of them within a few days of her funeral.
The Dead Girls Detective Agency just didn't work for me. I was expecting a fluffy and humorous read, but this one just didn't have enough substance to hold it together.
Teaching/Parental Notes:
Age: 16 and up
Gender: Female
Sex: Kissing, talk of "hooking up"
Violence: Murder - pushed in front of a subway
Inappropriate Language: Bitch, Pissed, Ho, Asshole, Slut, Whore
Substance Use/Abuse: None
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
medium-paced
Loveable characters:
Yes
Relatively charming. I wouldn't mind a sequel. The premise is that teens who die before their time, and their murders are unsolved go to a limbo type place where they are ghosts who need to solve their murders.