A review by raeanne
Notes from Ghost Town by Kate Ellison

3.0

Won a hardcover copy from The Reading Teen with a paperback copy of The Butterfly Clues.

Compared to The Butterfly Clues, there's more mystery, family and teen drama. Liver is less out there than Lo with using alcohol and sex to cope. The perspective is standard aside from being colorblind.

The "color blind but now I see" is too on the nose.



It feels forced, especially having it set in a week before Owen died. There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to it. It just happens like that for tension and drama.

I think I'd like it better if seemed tied to one specific thing, like kissing Owen and getting closure with him or her mother committing murder and getting closure with her. Instead it's both and neither.

Mystery-wise it's more solid and straight forward. It's layered and flowed better than The Butterfly Clues but I still called it before 100 pages. Olivia's risky behavior has more to do with inner turmoil than the mystery.

It builds slowly considering we know going in she's going to investigate Owen's murder and there's obviously something to find. While reading and after finishing, I still had twinges that it was feeling too long. Maybe it could've been tighter but...meh.



It's more suspenseful and tense than The Butterfly Clues though I can't pinpoint why. I think it boils down to better disbursing and management of the clues.

The countdown for Liver's mother's hearing has a lot of wasted time with kid's wasted hookups and family drama. But at least some of it has a point in the plot besides being theatrical.



I do like how figuring out the 5 W's isn't the end. Olivia still has to prove it and that she's not making stuff up.

The personal stories afterwards is wrapped up well. It felt like good closure.

Not bad, not remarkable but solid and enjoyable.