HAUNTED

Heroine Suze Simon copes with a homicidal ghost and juggles two love interests in the fifth installment of Cabot’s Mediator series, written under the name Jenny Carroll. Suze found out that she could see ghosts when she was six after her recently deceased father “came back for a little post-funeral chat.” In fact, 16-year-old Suze is a mediator, a person who helps spirits trapped on Earth move along to the next phase of awareness. In this story, Craig, an angry ghost who was an incredible swimmer and sailor, is earthbound because he’s convinced that his sickly brother, who was with him when a storm capsized their catamaran, should have been the one to drown, not him. In fact, Craig is so angry that he’s now trying to kill his brother, a situation that Suze is desperately trying to prevent while figuring out how to get him into the great beyond. Concurrently, Suze has to contend with two potential romantic partners: Jesse, a morally upright hottie who was murdered 150 years ago, and Paul, a high-school student who is handsome, twisted, and very much alive. Despite the fact that Suze has severe reservations about Paul, she is tempted, especially since Jesse has all but ignored her since they kissed some weeks ago. Although Cabot’s heroine speaks in a voice that is funny, flippant, and pure teen, Suze’s repetitious obsessing gives the material a padded feel, and the perfunctory plot barely hangs together. (Fiction. 12+)