GIVE UP THE GHOST

Sixteen-year-old Cass McKenna has been an outcast since junior high, and she’s just fine with that, thanks. What does she need with the living when she can see and speak to the dead, who furnish her with all the delicious gossip she needs to get back at the jerks who blackballed her so viciously so long ago? Cass’s only confidante is the ghost of her sister Paige, and she lives in polite half-silence with her dad while her mother accepts far-flung freelance travel-journalism assignments to escape her grief. When student council vice-president Tim approaches Cass to ask if she can contact his late mother, the two slowly—in prickly fits and starts—inch toward friendship. The weight of Tim’s loss is palpable, and as Cass comes to understand the depth of his sadness, she begins to embrace life again herself. Beneath some predictable plotting is a poignant character study of a deeply wounded girl moving toward a nuanced, forgiving view of humanity. Crewe’s first effort will make readers wonder what else she’s got up her sleeve. (Paranormal. YA)