QUEEN OF THE DEAD

Former cheerleader, fashionista and “mean girl supreme” and current spirit guide Alona Dare and social recluse and ghost-talker Will Killian trade their flirtatious banter for a more serious dilemma in this sequel to The Ghost and the Goth (2010).

Alona’s only been dead two months, and already her recovering alcoholic mother is throwing out her prized mementos and her absent father and his ex-wife (a.k.a. Step-Mothra) are having a baby. Now could Will be interested in fellow ghost-talker Mina Blackwell and her Ghostbuster-like boxes meant to capture spirits? When Alona enters a comatose body, she only hopes to communicate with her selfish parents and teach Will a lesson, but she ends up getting stuck in the process. Once again the teens’ alternating voices give differing perspectives. Will learns about the Order of the Guardians, a secret society of ghost-talkers bent on ridding the world of unsafe spirits, as well as his dead father’s role in it, and selfish, immobile Alona contemplates her own karma and why she was left on Earth. The tension mounts when the Order comes to consider Alona dangerous. While this sequel lacks some of the amusement provided by the first book, plenty of back story keeps readers engaged in the continuing story line.