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A review by audreychamaine
Notes from Ghost Town by Kate Ellison
3.0
I’ve now read two mysteries by Kate Ellison in which mental illness plays a major role. The first, The Butterfly Clues, features a protagonist who has severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as kleptomania. In Notes from Ghost Town, the protagonist’s mother is the one with mental illness: she is schizophrenic. When Olivia loses the ability to see color, turning the world around her into various gradations of gray, she fears that she has inherited her mother’s mental illness. Not only that, but the best friend she loved who was murdered by her mother has come back as a ghost.
While I liked Notes from Ghost Town well enough, it never got under my skin. I thought about it, and found that it was the same problem I had with The Butterfly Clues. There just isn’t enough emotional connection. Even in scenes that should be extremely emotionally motivated, it reads as a bit sterile to me. The story was fine, the mystery even had me wondering for most of the book. I just didn’t feel the highs and lows that I expect when I read teen fiction.
While I liked Notes from Ghost Town well enough, it never got under my skin. I thought about it, and found that it was the same problem I had with The Butterfly Clues. There just isn’t enough emotional connection. Even in scenes that should be extremely emotionally motivated, it reads as a bit sterile to me. The story was fine, the mystery even had me wondering for most of the book. I just didn’t feel the highs and lows that I expect when I read teen fiction.