A review by dinipandareads
Sheets by Brenna Thummler

dark emotional sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

If you're like me and you pick this up solely because of the cover, and you don't look at the synopsis, you might go into this thinking it'll be a cute story about... Sheets? Turns out, while there are many sheets involved, it's not at all the light-hearted cutesy story that I thought it would be. This deals with heavy themes of death, grief, belonging, and loneliness. It's told from two main POVs, Marjorie a living girl and Wendell, a young ghost boy. My heart hurt for Marjorie and all that she was dealing with—from the grief of losing her mother, an absent father who's lost to grief and depression, and running a family business that's being sabotaged by a nasty man. She's such a resilient character who was easy to empathise with. Wendell was also a character whose story made my heart feel heavy.  He doesn't feel like he belongs in the land of ghosts and goes to the human world and lands in Marjorie's family laundromat by chance. The Land of Ghosts and the story behind the community of young ghosts who exist there with Wendell made my heart hurt even more! But I loved the way they still had fun and stuck by each other, even when they didn't always get along. I also appreciated how the author delineated between the living world in colour and the land of ghosts in monochrome. I also think that the heavy themes were handled well and touched on sensitively, if not a bit lightly. I did want a bit more depth to the story, especially Marj's interactions with the other characters in the story like her swim coach and the popular jock who rocks up out of nowhere in the end (although he has some presence from the beginning). I hope that this will be explored further in subsequent books in the series!

Also, thankfully, both our MCs' stories end on a more positive note which signifies that everything is going to be alright. Overall, if you can handle a sadder read, it's worthwhile picking it up for a wonderfully illustrated story about death, grief and belonging. I'm glad I finally read it :)
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