It is Eva’s 16th birthday, but there is no celebration. No one wishes her happy birthday, not even her grandfather, but she is used to being neglected and ignored a lot of the time – though Grandfather cares about her, he is very old and in poor health, and her birthday isn’t seen as a very happy occasion, as Eva’s mother died on the same day she was born. It is some time before she realises she is invisible to all around her and finds herself talking to ghosts – it seems she is one too. She is assumed to have killed herself like her mother. Eva doesn’t believe that and sets out to investigate her own murder.

This young adult ghost story/mystery is not particularly original but Lassiter’s mixture of ingredients borrowed from all over the place was an entertaining and enjoyable read.

Eva is an orphan, who lives in a decaying stately home with her grandfather. She is an imaginative person who likes to read and has been able to see ghosts all her life – she remembers playing with an 18th century little boy. There are lots of scheming relatives, aunts and cousins, who are hoping for a good inheritance when the old man dies and have no time for Eva. Now Grandfather has been taken to hospital and they are already coming in and arranging tour parties around the House. Her cousin Felix, just a little older than Eva, confidently expects to be the heir and is looking around for her body. He is a truly nasty character I loved to hate – perhaps he is a bit obvious and two-dimensional, but this is a modern fairy tale and the villains in fairy tales are rarely rounded characters.

There is more about class in this story than I remember in the children’s stories of historic houses and ghosts I read when I was young. Maggie is a resentful ghost servant girl who is suspicious of Eva as one of the Chance family who exploited her when she was alive. Among the living there are brother and sister Kyra and Kyle, locals who have come to work at the House – they can see Eva. Kyra bullied Eva when they were at school together, but Eva sees another side of her now. Eva must forge new links with these unlikely allies if she is not only to find out what happened to her but to prevent further bad things happening.

There are a quite a few twists and turns in the story - while there is nothing particularly astonishing, I enjoyed the read and think lots of teenagers would too. ( )

Ah, this book reminded me so much of my first reading experiences that I couldn't help but love it. When I was much younger and had read more of The Babysitters' Club and Sweet Valley High than was probably healthy, I turned to the somewhat darker Goosebumps series by R.L.Stine, including such classics as Say Cheese and Die and Monster Blood. Anyone else read this? No? Just me then...

What I loved about those books, and indeed this one, was the unashamed use of the supernatural. I'm sure I've made this point before but I respect authors who will weave the supernatural into a story so tightly that it just seems to belong, rather than wasting time on characters who don't want to believe etc or worrying about whether the book is 'realistic'. The ghosts in this book are exactly that. Eva finds herself a ghost despite having no recollection at all about how she died. Rather than spending endless pages pondering the nature of the soul or not believing her predicament, there's good balance and timing for the phasing of reluctance into acceptance.

One strong point is Lassiter's expansion on what could have been a cheesy ghost theme. The ghosts of the House are varied and unique. Some ghosts were nothing more than a single feature, like 'The Stalker' that has nothing but the desire to kill other ghosts, while others retain their personalities and 'grip' on the world, like Eva. I found myself drawn into the tangled web of the ghosts in spite of myself and felt like that made it more than normal.

Obviously I couldn't review this book without mentioning Eva. Eva Chance is a social outcast and something of a recluse. Bullied by her schoolmates, she has all but retreated to the House. Her aching loneliness tugged at even my old heartstrings and it reminded me of all the harsh points about being a teenager. Eva's family and its history (which is suitably tortured...) make for great back story too.

Outside of the Chance family are Kyle and Kyra, employed to spruce the House up in time for the tourist season. Kyle is kind of sweet and features nicely as a 'white knight' type figure. Kyra, however, was a weak link for me. She is Eva's nemesis, so much as teenagers can have nemeses and is actually rather irritating to read. She is everything a stereotypical teenage character shouldn't be - arrogant, rude, ignorant and a bully. Still, her ability to annoy is dampened by the curiosities of those around her so it's not all bad!

The mystery element plays nicely alongside the ghost story and make for a tale worthy of any teenager's time. My only real criticism was that the ending (that I obviously won't give away) was a little too convenient for my taste. I would guess, however, that that is largely as a result of it being a story for younger readers so I won't grumble too much.

A final noteworthy point: I stayed up late because I had to read the end of this book. To anyone who knows me, this is high praise indeed. I require at least 7-8 hours of sleep a night or I am unfit for polite society. With this, I was gripped and tugged on into the darkness by that same urge that kept the teenage me huddled under a duvet turning pages feverishly. I accept that it might have been an exercise in reminiscing but golly it was fun!

Overall: I would definitely recommend this to early-late teens looking for something a bit more mature and (I'll admit it) creepy! It's very much a 'YA' book but a great one for the genre that offers something new in a paranormal sphere dominated by vampires and werewolves - I won't be passing it on to the adults in my life but I'll almost definitely give my copy to a younger cousin at some point for her to enjoy as an introduction to something new. Read it late at night for maximum "enjoyment"! ( )

Eva Chance wakes up on the morning of her 16th birthday with nothing to look forward to. To make matters worse, her thoughtless relatives are all descending on the crumbling old mansion that she has lived in with her Grandfather since her birth and the death of her mother. They all know that they could run the dilapidated building better than they can, but are never around for the day to day upkeep when the building is closed to the public.

Something is not right however, her relatives notice her even less than usual and, over the course of the day, Eva realises that she is, in fact a ghost. She's always known that there were nasty dark spots in the building, but now there seems to be something more malignant pervading the whole place. Determining to solve her own murder, she may have something worse to fight against than the machinations of the person who killed her.

My first impressions of this young adult book weren't great - most of the characters seemed a bit cliched and two dimensional and I could see where the plot was going. I'll stick by the 2D characters, however, the more I got into the story, the more I enjoyed it and I ended up whisking through fairly speedily. I wasn't wrong about where the plot went, but this didn't spoil the anything as the getting there was the important part.

Don't expect a work of deep literature, but read this book for what it is - a fast paced supernatural mystery and you'll probably come away happy. ( )

This is the story of Eva Chance, a young lady living in her ancestral home with her grandfather, who finds out she has died and she is, in fact, a ghost. Greedy family are milling around trying to get the house fit for the public so that it will make them lots of money - only Eva and her grandfather are against this. Other main characters are Kyra and Kyle Stratton, local twins who are doing temporary work at the house. Kyra used to bully Eva at school because of Eva's strange clothing and weird ways.

This is a nice enough book, but not really my kind of thing. I like a book to have some level of plausibility in it and this one really didn't. I think if you can suspend belief (not necessarily with regard to ghosts, but in the things that they do) and you enjoy a nicely written young adult book then you'll probably enjoy it. It took me a little while to get into it, but once I did I found it an easy read.

I think Rhiannon Lassiter is a good writer, and she's obviously got a vivid imagination. I would read another book by her, but wouldn't necessarily rush to do so. ( )

I probably should have guessed from the cover design but I actually hadn't realised until this book arrived that it is aimed at children (or maybe young adults?) I have to say that was a shame because I wouldn't have requested it if I'd known. It's not a bad story at all - ghosts in a big old house, one of whom takes a while to discover she is dead and has to solve the mystery of her own murder - and the fact that before I'd got half way through the book I didn't really care who had killed her is no reflection on the book itself, only on the fact that it wasn't something I was particularly interested in reading. If I have a minor complaint about the writing it's that I don't really understand why an English writer has to write her stories in teen-American but, again, that comes as a product of my age. Other reviewers clearly enjoyed the book but it was a real struggle for me to get to the end and a huge relief when I did. I just don't think I'm the right person to review this particular work and at least part of the blame for that must go to the publishers who, in their eagerness to get free reviews, didn't think it was necessary to aim the book at its most appropriate market. Readers still in their teens should completely ignore my review - readers over 20 should probably ignore the book. ( )