Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.

Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. Though the clues come about a bit too conveniently, Ellison’s lush, occasionally overwrought writing will leave romance fans swooning, especially after one scene that reads like a homage to the movie Ghost-except instead of a pottery wheel, it’s Stern’s piano. When the supernatural trail leads to the real killer, Olivia has to decide if she is willing to risk her own life to save her mother’s. Olivia uncovers shady connections to her real estate mogul father’s vacant new condo development (which she dubs Ghost Town) and finds out that her mother’s original lawyer committed suicide. Even though friend Raina and new crush Austin offer to help, Olivia is terrified to tell them about Stern’s ghost lest they believe she has inherited her mother’s illness. Unfortunately, he can’t quite remember who did him in, so Olivia begins investigating.

Now, as her mother’s sentencing date approaches, Stern appears to Olivia as a ghost to declare her mother’s innocence. Her sudden colorblindness foreshadowed a horrific event: A week after the kiss, piano prodigy Stern was murdered, and Olivia’s schizophrenic mother was accused of the crime. When Olivia Tithe, 16, kissed her childhood friend, Lucas Stern, the whole world went gray. A teenage girl gets clues from her dead best friend that help solve his murder in this soapy paranormal romance.

Notes from Ghost Town by Kate Ellison