The Ghost Who Was A Quilt by Riel Nason

"Once there was a little ghost who was a quilt." This little ghost was different from his parents who were both sheets and who flew high and fast because they were so light. They could glide and float on the wind, unlike the little ghost who was weighed down by his heavy quilt fabric. His many layers made flying difficult.

Ghosts are terrified of people. So one day when people came to the park where the little ghost and his friends were, they quickly flew away. But the little ghost was not so quick. Instead, he draped himself over a bench. A family sat down on the bench and the little ghost was terrified. Even worse, the little boy sitting on the bench, eating an ice cream cone, dripped melted ice cream onto him!

The stain made the little ghost embarrassed and different, which he did not like. He didn't like that he was made of different pieces of fabric, which made his friends call him "Scrappy". What he did like was Halloween. 

Usually at Halloween, while the other ghosts pretended to be decorations in the trees so they could watch the goings-on, the little ghost had to place himself on a clothesline. But this year he decided to be bolder; he would lay over a chair on a porch!  In this way he would be very close to what was happening. But the little ghost had no idea just how close he would actually get to humans!

Discussion

There aren't too many picture books more delightful than The Ghost Who Was A Quilt. This sweet story about a ghost made, not from sheets but from a quilt touches on the themes of being different, not fitting in, self-acceptance and bullying.

The little ghost has trouble accepting himself. He's made from scraps of fabric to form a quilt while all the other ghosts are made from sheets. Even when he's told that his ancestors were a bit unusual, he still finds accepting himself as he is, difficult. "His mom told him he had an ancestor who was a checkered tablecloth. And he great-grandmother was an elegant lace curtain. Everyone said she was the most beautiful ghost they'd ever seen. Even knowing this, the little ghost didn't feel any better."

However, the ghost's experience around humans, who he had been taught to fear, emboldens him to place himself closer to the trick-or-treaters at Halloween. When he gets taken home by a little girl, the little ghost finds acceptance from the most unlikely of places - a human family. And he comes to understand that everything that happened was because he was different. He was a quilt that got picked up to keep a little girl warm. This story encourages children to embrace their uniqueness, that we all have a place in this world!

While the story alone certainly has its merits, it is the captivating illustrations by Byron Eggenschwiler that make this picture book so delightful. Eggenschwiler's artwork, rendered using pencil and digital techniques, capture the many emotions the little ghost experiences through each of his adventures. The Ghost Who Was A Quilt is not just a picture book for Halloween, but can be enjoy all year around.

Book Details:

The Ghost Who Was A Quilt by Riel Nason
New York:  Tundra Books      2020

Friends For Life by Andrew Norriss

Francis Meredith is sitting on a bench during lunch break when he first meets Jessica. He immediately knows something's not quite right when he sees her walking across the grass in Victoria Beckham's zebra dress on a very cold February day. She sits down on the end of the bench and is shocked when Francis offers her a sip of his hot tea. The girl tells Francis that she is dead and that no one is able to see her or hear her. Except Francis. The girl, who reveals herself to be Jessica Fry, has been dead for a year but she doesn't remember the circumstances of her death. Francis and Jessica agree to meet again after school.

They meet and decide to go to Francis's home on Alma Road. Jessica is now dressed for winter - she just has to think about what she wants to wear and it appears on her body. Francis takes Jessica to his special room upstairs at the top of his house. This room is filled with Francis's drawings of fashion designs as well as a sewing machine, bolts of material, a table covered in paper patterns, dressmaker's dummy and a couch. On a set of shelves are at least fifty dolls, each dressed in a different outfit that Francis has created. Francis explains to Jessica that he's doing a history of fashion.

Jessica tells Francis that she does not remember how she died but that she knows she is dead. She was in her third floor hospital room and saw her body covered by a sheet. Despite feeling calm, Jessica feels there is something missing. She has been returning every night for the past year to her hospital room to try to determine what that something is. Neither knows why Francis can see her while others cannot. Francis and Jessica discover they have several things in common including their love of fashion, they are the same age and are only children to single mothers.

As the days pass, Francis and Jessica spend all their days together. Jessica goes to school with Francis, helping him in each of his classes. They spend time after school in Francis's special room on the top floor of his home. To those who can't see Jessica, Francis appears to be a loner who doesn't talk to anyone. Francis begins to be bullied by Quentin Howard, a boy in his class who knows about Francis and the dolls.

Meanwhile Francis's mother, Grace becomes more and more concerned about the amount of time Francis is spending alone. Since his mother can't see Jessica, she believes he comes home every day and spends time alone in the attic. Worried after hearing Francis talking to himself, Grace suggests that Francis meet a new neighbour's son, Andy who will be starting at Francis's school, John Felton,  the following week. Andy doesn't want to attend school and Francis's mother is hoping he can help Andy.

It turns out Andy is a girl named Andi Campion, a stocky, redhead who called Thug by her mother. Andi's mother explains that it is short for "Thuglette", a name she gave her daughter because she was always getting into fights when she was younger. Francis takes Andi to his bedroom where Jessica is waiting. Both Francis and Jessica are shocked when Andi is able to see and talk to Jessica. They reveal Jessica's situation to Andi who thinks she's very cool. Andi is curious about Jessica, especially about her not remembering the circumstances of her death. Both Francis's mother and Mrs. Campion are astonished that Francis and Andi seem to get along.

Andi reluctantly agrees to go to school as long as Francis is with her. However, Francis warns her that he might not be the best person to hang with, telling her he is viewed as "different" and therefore is not popular. He takes Andi to his fashion room in the attic, showing her his creations. Andi tells Francis she has an uncle in the fashion industry who makes lots of money. At school the principal agrees to Francis's suggestion that Andi be placed in his class. With a little help from Jessica during math class, Andi is able to succeed. She also manages to save Francis from the bully whose been tormenting him.  The three friends spend many happy days together. Andi believes that Jessica should know how she died, so she arranges for her mother to take them to the village where Jessica lived. They locate her grave and convince Jessica to visit her home. When she does this, she does not return. Frances decides to visit Jessica's house and meets her aunt, Joanna Barfield who is a counsellor and tells him to call anytime.

Jessica does not return for days, leaving Francis and Andi upset. When she does finally show up she's wearing her hospital gown and can't remember exactly what happened. Every time the three teens discuss how Jessica might have died she fades.  Meanwhile, Francis's reputation for working wonders spreads because of Andi's transformation into a good student and a girl who has started to wear skirts. This leads to a request by Roland Boyle's mother to have Francis help talk her son into returning to school at St. Saviour's. Francis reluctantly agrees and when he visits Roland he discovers that he too can see Jessica. The group of four now sets out to discover what they might have in common that allows them to be able to see Jessica while others can not. Little do they know that what links them will help save the life of a girl in distress and free Jessica from being stuck as a ghost. 

Discussion

Friends For Life is a simple story about three teens who are considering suicide but are saved by an unexpected relationship with a ghost. That ghost who succeeded in killing herself, has been sent to save them as well as an unknown fourth person. The title of the novel has a double meaning - not only friends for life in the usual sense of being friends forever but also friends who save the lives of others contemplating suicide. Friends For Life explores the factors that often lead teens to consider suicide and what kinds of interventions might help in preventing suicide.

Francis, Andi and Roland do not fit in with their peers - each of them is very different. Francis loves clothing and fashion and dresses dolls. Andi has a body type that is different from the tall, slim, blonde type promoted as "beautiful" by the fashion industry, film and media. Roland, with his heavy-set large frame, also has a different body type considered unattractive for a boy.

In the novel's exploration of suicide, Jessica tells how she became very depressed after the death of her mother and then her grandmother. Although her aunt and uncle were, as she described it, "nice" this was not enough. It is the character Roland however who puts into words exactly how a suicidal teenager thinks. "It's funny, isn't it," said Roland, "how people being nice doesn't help when you feel like that. You know they want to help, you know they're trying to help, but it's like they're in another world. They have no idea how you're really feeling. Or what to do about it."

"You can act as if you think it matters whether you've done any schoolwork or what you eat or what you wear, but in the end...the pretending is such an effort, and you get so tired, that all you really want is for it to stop. For everything to stop."

Both Jessica and Roland state that once the idea of ending things takes hold, it becomes very difficult to ignore. Francis states that more than anything teens in this situation want to be like their friends, but find they cannot.  "And that's what gets to you in the end, isn't it?" It was Francis who was speaking now. "The being different. You want so much to be like everyone else but...He looked sympathetically across at Roland as he spoke. "You know it's never going to happen. You're always going to be different. With you it's your weight; with me it was all this."

The friendship between the three teens and Jessica changes their perspective on life and helps them to consider the things they might have done to help themselves. Francis and Jessica realize that not telling anyone how they were feeling, was a mistake. Francis wonders why he didn't try to tell Quentin Howard to stop teasing him. When Roland is teased at school by Dermot about his size, he finds that the support of his friends and the school administration changes how he views the teasing. It no longer matters and he wonders "why on earth he hadn't told Dermot to leave, or simply walked away.  The thing he had most feared would happen had happened, but for some reason it had been okay. Perhaps it was because there were people around him who said it was not okay; perhaps that was what made the difference. Or maybe it was simply the realization that someone telling him he was fat wasn't that important. It didn't mean anything."

Jessica the ghost helps Francis, Andi and Roland understand there were alternatives to the choice she made and to prevent them from making the same mistake. Roland determines that her continued presence as a ghost means there is someone else she is meant to help. Eventually Jessica discovers that person is another student at John Felton who is being bullied by fellow students. Like Jessica, it was a series of traumatic events that led to life becoming unbearable for this student.

At the end of the novel, Francis gains more insight about suicide and how people come to this point as he reads through the letters he receives after he and his friends intervened to help the student.  Many of the people were not starving or in chronic pain but instead felt they were "different" and that they felt alone. This leads Francis to wonder why being different is so painful. Jessica's Aunt Jo tells him that it may be that some people feel things more deeply than others and this combined with sometime traumatic in their lives leaves them vulnerable.

Friends For Life is a sensitive treatment of youth suicide filled with realistic characters who form a supportive, caring relationship with each other, demonstrating the power friendship can have on transforming the lives of those around us. The novel ends on a hopeful note with Francis feeling more positive about being different and coming to the conclusion that life can change very quickly. Francis discovers that he has learned to accept what makes him different and that has helped those around him accept him too. "And the strange thing was that, now that he didn't really care what other people thought, most them seemed quite happy to let him be as different as he liked."  He recognizes that his life has changed quickly over the span of a few months. Life could "appear so impossible at one moment, and so full of hope and possibilities the next."  That change can bring about opportunities for unexpected happiness. This is the lesson Francis's unexpected meeting with Jessica taught him - "how much fun there was to be had in life, how full of opportunities it was, how many chances it gave for enjoyment." 

 Friends For Life is highly recommended. Originally published in the United Kingdom as Jessica's Ghost. Andrew Norriss has stated he normally writes comedy and the story told in Friends For Life was not the usual stuff he writes. Over the course of ten years his story took shape. Norriss writes that he at times, like many of us, has experienced difficult times and is grateful to the "Jessicas" in his life "whose mere presence was a constant reminder that, even at its darkest, life if full of possibilities and that, yes, miracles can happen."

Book Details:

Friends For Life by Andrew Norriss
New York: Scholastic Books Inc.   2015
234 pp.

Hotel Ruby by Suzanne Young

Seventeen-year-old Audrey Casella and her eighteen-year-old brother, Daniel, are on their way from their home in Arizona to live with their grandmother in Elko, Nevada. The decision to have Audrey and Daniel spend the summer with their nearly eighty-year-old maternal grandmother was made by their father after the "raucous party" Audrey held at home.

Like the rest of her family, Audrey is having a hard time coping with the sudden death of her mother, who was a counselor at her high school. By her own admission she "was busy self-medicating with all manner of troublesome behaviors; Daniel was retreating into avoidance and denial." Meanwhile, her father seems to have stopped living the day of Audrey's mother died. 

However, on their journey to Elko, their father stops at a mysterious hotel called Hotel Ruby, hidden from the road in the trees. Ornate iron gates lead to a driveway lined with trees, a "courtyard, a circle of stone benches and statues, low manicured shrubs with tiny lights brightening everything." The actual hotel is huge - "A white stone front, huge archway with ivy crawling up the walls." Inside is even more impressive: "The lobby is an explosion of grandeur: rich wood furniture, fringed velvet fabrics, and an impossibly large chandelier hanging above it all. Paintings and tapestries decorate the walls, which must be at least three stories high."

In the hotel they meet Kenneth, the concierge, who seems friendly. Audrey's father asks for three rooms just for the night. Kenneth tells Audrey's father that he and Daniel can have rooms on the sixth floor, while Audrey's room will be on the thirteenth floor - definitely an unusual arrangement. After learning about the various amenities available at the hotel, Daniel decides to join the ongoing Anniversary Party-1937 while Audrey and her father take the elevator to their rooms.

Audrey finds the atmosphere of the thirteenth floor mysterious and "heavy. Like the air is too thick." But her gorgeous room quickly removes any ominous feelings she might have. Audrey returns to the lobby and following the sounds of music, discovers the grand ballroom where there is a large party in progress. Like the rest of the hotel, the ballroom is magnificent. "The room is three stories tall, with massive chandeliers, golds and yellows splashed through the room, heavy deep-red drapes framing the doorway. On the walls are panels of intricate tapestries, gold frames." At the party Audrey meets dapper Elias Lange whom she finds herself drawn to. However, it appears that Elias has a girlfriend when he is angrily confronted by Catherine, a beautiful but somewhat cynical woman of Audrey's age. Elias offers to take Audrey on a tour of the hotel, but that doesn't happen when Kenneth questions Audrey, telling her the party is invite only, and firmly requesting she leave the ballroom.

Back in her room on the thirteenth floor, Audrey notices the faint but continuously playing background music which she cannot quite place. Investigation of the thirteenth floor only creeps her out with its chilliness and vacant rooms. In the morning, Daniel comes to Audrey's room. She learns that he received an invitation to the ballroom party but hasn't gone yet. Instead, he spent the night with a beautiful but strange blonde girl, walking the hallways of the Ruby. That girl turns out to be Catherine, Elias's friend. At breakfast, Audrey notices her father looking markedly better. Unexpectedly, he decides they will stay another two nights. As they are eating breakfast, Audrey suddenly sees their waitress, Tanya, with blood oozing from her side. The vision is only momentary but very upsetting to Audrey who quickly brushes it off as her imagination. Later on, Audrey meets up with Elias, who convinces her to let him show her around the Ruby.

During their tour, Elias is vague about why he is staying at the Ruby. When they meet Daniel in the lobby, he complains that he can't get a cellphone signal. They also meet the housekeeper, Lourdes Fuller, who has just returned from leave. Lourdes is upset that Elias has taken Audrey to the basement, fearing that this will make Kenneth, who is in charge of the Ruby, angry and that she will be punished again. Lourdes seems upset when she learns where Audrey's room is located. Lourdes takes Audrey back upstairs and invites her to a party on the rooftop, to celebrate her return to the Ruby.

At dinner that night, Audrey notes the remarkable change in her father. "His wavy salt-and-pepper hair is tamed with gel or mousse, making it flat and old-fashioned. He's clean-shaven, rosy cheeked. But strangest of all, he's interested in our lives again." Her father informs them that he has now "received an invitation to the party in the ballroom tonight."  Daniel plans to attend the party that night, but Audrey cannot as she still does not have an invite. The family dinner does not go well however when her father brings up Audrey's irresponsible behaviour that led to her and Daniel being sent away for the summer. Audrey and Daniel leave, with Audrey going to the rooftop party with Lourdes. Many of the Ruby's staff are in attendance including the waitress, Tanya, the valet, Jerome, Joshua and also Elias. When she suggests that Elias skip the ballroom party, Tanya reminds Elias that there are rules they must follow to avoid being punished. Elias promises to meet Audrey after the party.

Lourdes tells Audrey the story of the Ruby and the fire that destroyed the ballroom on its first anniversary, killing sixty-seven guests who were locked in the ballroom to prevent the fire from spreading. The hotel was rebuilt and "In honor of those who perished, the Hotel Ruby holds a party every night in that ballroom." At the party Audrey learns that the workers have house rules: "No talk of work in the off-hours,...no talk of Kenneth, no talk of our lives outside of the Ruby." 

The group decides to initiate Audrey by scaring her with talk of ghosts and taking her to the memorial buried deep in the forest surrounding the Ruby. After the scary situation, Audrey notices her arm hurts again but she refuses to take the pills Lourdes gives her. Instead, Audrey goes to the lobby and confronts Kenneth about not having an invitation to the party. He tells her to get some rest and then points out the bleeding gash on her forehead. Completely freaked by this, Audrey notices she can barely walk and sees the blood on the handkerchief. But once in the elevator, her head looks fine. This event completely unsettles her.

The next morning at breakfast, Audrey's father apologizes for his behaviour at dinner the night before, and tries to assure her that things are now going to be fine. He tells Audrey that Daniel was also at the party, but didn't want to be there and left early with Catherine. Daniel arrives for breakfast, disheveled and in obvious pain. He tells Audrey he blacked out after leaving the party and he now feels like his head is split in two. When Audrey looks at him, she is horrified at what she sees. Neither Daniel nor her father see what Audrey sees, further upsetting her. This experience along with her seeing Tanya bleeding from her side leave Audrey now questioning what exactly is going on. Little does she know the reality of what has happened to her and her family and what the Hotel Ruby really is.

Discussion

Hotel Ruby is a novel with a fascinating premise that almost works except for the fact that the clues to the mystery of the hotel and to what is happening to the Audrey and her family are easy to discover. The Casella family is struggling to deal with the death of their mother and wife; both children are acting out and their father is unable to function as a parent and therefore help them cope with the loss. Instead of seeking help, the father decides to place the children with their grandmother but nothing is revealed about what he plans for himself. On the trip to the grandmother's home, he crashes the car, fatally wounding everyone.

This sets the stage for the family to enter the Hotel Ruby, by all appearances a normal hotel, but one with a ghastly history: the deaths of dozens of people deliberately sacrificed to save the hotel during a terrible fire. In fact, the Ruby is haunted by those who died during the fire of 1937. Even worse, the ghosts who work in the hotel are controlled by a very evil ghost, Kenneth, who runs the Ruby on their plane of existence and who has the power to punish them by returning them to the state they were in just before they died. While everyone else is willing to go along with this, the rebellious character of Audrey leads her to push back against Kenneth.

Unlike her brother and father, Audrey is not yet dead, existing on thirteenth floor, able to interact with the ghosts and able to see the living. However, Audrey doesn't remember the accident and believes that they are all alive and have simply stopped at the Hotel Ruby. As time passes, through Audrey's narration, astute readers begin to pick up on the many clues that are peppered throughout the novel as to what really happens at Hotel Ruby.

The hints start early, when the Casellas arrive at the hotel on their journey to Elko. Audrey notices immediately that "There's a haggard desk attendant in the corner, tapping the computer keys while he surfs the Internet. He doesn't even lift his head to acknowledge us. I clear my throat to get his attention, but when he still doesn't respond, I sigh..." This seems to suggest that the attendant doesn't actually see Audrey and her family.

The concierge hints that people rarely check out of the hotel suggesting it is something other than what it appears to be. This is also echoed by Joshua at the rooftop party when he states, "At the Ruby...where you can stay tonight. Or stay forever." These hints continue as Audrey is separated from her father and Daniel, in a room on the thirteenth floor - floor that often isn't acknowledged in hotels. The hotel does not seem to have clocks and they are unable to get cell service despite seeing others use their phones.

Audrey also begins experiencing various unexplained transient physical problems. When she gets out of bed the first morning, she notes that her "ankle buckles under my weigh, and I stagger back onto the bed." Her arm begins to hurt at the rooftop party, "an ache starts in my arm, deep in the bone." Kenneth reveals to her the bloody gash on her head. She also begins seeing terrible wounds on various people; first the waitress, Tanya who has a bloody spot on her side, and then her brother Daniel, who has a ghastly head wound. Strangely Audrey never mentions these sights to anyone - even her family.

However, the single most important clue involves the invitation to the party in the ballroom. It's not subtle at all. First Daniel, then Audrey's father receive invitations to the ballroom. These invitations really mean they have died. Audrey has not received an invitation and when she presses Kenneth for one he tells her that only the hotel can get her one.

The assignment of their hotel rooms also foretells each of their fates: Daniel and their father are placed on the sixth floor indicating that they were close to death when they checked into the Hotel Ruby. Audrey however, is placed on the thirteenth floor where surviving souls eventually return to the living.

The reality of Hotel Ruby is revealed in Chapter 17 when Audrey finds herself dying on the road two miles from the Ruby. She realizes she has been in a car accident and becomes determined to save her father and Daniel. However, once back in the Ruby she comes to learn that this is impossible. Eventually she does receive an invitation leading Lourdes to explain what is happening. "Your body is dying, and if you die here, you stay here forever. You'll be trapped in the Ruby with us. The invitation is symbolic. It's letting go." However, readers will already know this - Lourdes is merely confirming their understanding.

Tanya tells her that because she hasn't yet used her invitation, Audrey can still return home. She can live, but living will mean leaving Daniel and her father here to live on a different plane of reality under Kenneth's tyranny. Tanya tells her she and her sister experienced the same situation and that Daniel will understand if Audrey leaves. This leads Audrey to sacrifice her chance to live in order to help her family and those at the Ruby. She decides she doesn't want her life. To Audrey, staying at the Ruby with her brother and her father offer her the chance to be a family again and to heal from the loss of her mother. She feels her life is irretrievably broken, filled with guilt over falling out of love with her boyfriend Ryan and grief over her mother, Helen's sudden death at age forty-three. Audrey believes Hotel Ruby offers her hope. "My father waits with Daniel, both looking heart-broken. Despite that, seeing them together overwhelms me with a sense of hope. Hope for us. Now that Kenneth is gone, there is no fear. I have my family. Those words are everything: I have my family."

The wealth of hints leads to a climax that is less than exciting: Audrey faces a choice that will either lead her to reclaim her life or to follow her family into eternity at the Ruby. In some ways, the ending was disappointing and depressing. A young girl so overwhelmed with the death of her mother and then the death of her father and brother, chooses to reject all the possibilities living might give her, and decides to die. She sees no hope in living, instead finding hope in being a ghost trapped in a hotel, attending a party in perpetuity. None of the characters really try to convince her otherwise. There doesn't seem to be any reason to remain at the Hotel Ruby, other than Audrey wanting to be with her father and brother, and wouldn't they want her to live? And where is her mother who is also dead?

Although Hotel Ruby is not as suspenseful as one might wish for, but the novel is engaging, beginning with its appealing cover and the interesting hook to draw readers in. 

Book Details:

Hotel Ruby by Suzanne Young
New York: Simon Pulse 2015
281 pp.

The Last Time We Say Goodbye by Cynthia Hand

The Last Time We Say Goodbye is novel about a young woman who must deal with the aftermath of both her parent's divorce and the suicide of her brother. The story is narrated by eighteen-year-old Alexis (Lex) Riggs who lives with her mother in Raymond, Nebraska. Her family has collapsed with the divorce of her parents after her father moved out four years ago and the recent suicide of her younger brother Tyler. Lex's narrative alternates between the present and diary entries. Although the journal entries parallel some of the events in the present they also fill in the details of how Ty came to commit suicide.

Lex begins the diary entries on February 5 at the request of her therapist Dave. It has been seven weeks since the death of  Ty and Dave wants her to write about when he was happy rather than how his life ended. Lex's journal entries cover a wide range of events, filling in the missing details and providing the backstory.  

The journal entries reveal that Tyler tried to kill himself two years earlier by taking an overdose of Advil, the day after their parent's divorce was finalized. When his dad finally shows up at the hospital, Ty begs his father to come home. Sadly, he was not open to Ty's request. After the suicide attempt, Ty saw a therapist and went on anti-depressants and his life seemed to turn around. In the two years after Ty's suicide attempt, their father remarried and their mom became a licensed nurse. Ty joined the basketball team and became popular in high school, while Lex achieved a high SAT score and began to consider applying to Ivy League colleges including MIT.

Other entries detail Lex's relationship with a fellow classmate, Steven, a boy much like Lex, who loves physics. Steven convinces her to date him as an experiment to see if there is chemistry between them. At the same time, Ty begins dating a cheerleader, Ashley, taking her to prom. However, Ty and Ashley's relationship ends in early December and Ty begins acting out, punching one of his friends in the face, breaking his jaw.  Journal entries also talk about when Tyler was born, what happened when their dad left their family "on a Tuesday morning in July", Ty's preoccupation with dying which began with the death of a girl from their church, Lex's break up with Steven, and the details of Ty's last day. Lex's last entry is March 31st in which she writes about December 20th. This date was Lex and Steven's six month anniversary but it was also the day Ty killed himself.

In the present, Lex's mother is not coping well post-divorce. She tells Lex that she senses Ty's presence in the house because she can smell his cologne. Later that night Lex also smells Ty's cologne and thinks she sees him standing by his bedroom door. Shocked Lex throws her phone at the image which vanishes. Lex is left with a cracked phone that thankfully still retains his last ever text to her. When she goes to see her therapist Dave, Lex decides not to tell him about the vision because she fears he will offer her medication, but she does tell him that she's stopped seeing her friends.  She's broken up with her boyfriend Steven, and her other friend Eleanor is studiously avoiding her. Dave considers this to be a very sad situation and encourages her to reach out to her friends who are trying to help her.

One night after returning home from dinner with her father, Lex again sees a vision of Ty, this time in the mirror, standing behind her. Terrified she runs out of the house but later on returns and discovers a letter addressed to Ashley in Ty's room.  At this time Lex runs into an old friend of Ty's, Damian Whittaker who was part of a trio that consisted of Ty and Patrick Murphy. They were very close friends but gradually drifted apart in high school.

Lex makes the first of several discoveries about some photographs in their home; a picture of Ty and his father is missing from its frame in the hallway. Her mother also tells her that her father's graduation picture is missing from its frame in the stairwell. Between the visions of Ty and the missing pictures, Lex wonders if Ty's spirit is still around and wants something.

Life continues on for Lex and those around her; a fact brought home by her acceptance to MIT on March 3rd. However, Lex feels ambivalent and so she doesn't tell her parents, her therapist or her friends. She finally tells her mother when she comes home and discovers her mother an emotional wreck after a friend tried to get her to pack up Ty's room. But the joy of Lex's acceptance is destroyed by her mother's belief that her own life is over. As they are putting Ty's room back together, Lex and her mother look over the collage that Ty put together in the days before he died. Missing from the collage is a picture of Ty and his father, which her mother feels should have been in the collage. Lex's father was devastated when he saw there was no picture of himself in the collage. Lex notices that there is a picture of Ashley and Ty, suggesting that Ty wasn't mad at Ashley. Although she almost shreds the letter, Lex does end up giving Ashley Tyler's letter.

Lex's high school is rocked by another suicide, that of Patrick Murphy, a close friend of Ty's, who jumped in front of a train. Lex and her mother attend the funeral which brings back memories of Ty's funeral. At the wake, Lex notices the two collages similar to Ty's collage and when Stairway to Heaven is played, she realizes that like Ty, Patrick planned his suicide down to the simplest details. When Lex returns home she slips out to the backyard fort she and Ty shared as kids and finds the missing picture of her brother with their dad that was meant for the collage. She feels that despite the anger Ty felt towards their dad leaving, he would now want her to place the picture in the frame and tell their dad. But Lex has no intention of doing this because she cannot forgive her father for leaving and believes he is responsible for Ty's death. Instead she begins to focus on saving Damian Whittaker, the last remaining friend of Ty's group, whom she is convinced will try to commit suicide. Can Lex save Damian and learn to forgive herself and her father for all that has happened?

Discussion

The Last Time We Say Goodbye is rich in themes of forgiveness, acceptance and guilt. It also presents, quite vividly, the effects of divorce on teenage children, and the effects of suicide on surviving family and friends.

Lex's family has been struggling to come to terms with the breakup of their family.  When their father left, Lex was 15 and Ty was 13. The night he left, Ty and Lex went to the baseball field and smashed all their father's bottles of cologne with a baseball bat. They vow never to forgive their father for what he has done. The day after the divorce is finalized Ty attempts to kill himself by overdosing and when his father finally shows up at the hospital, he begs his dad to come home. Their mother has also not dealt with being abandoned, although she has managed to become a nurse. She self-medicates with alcohol and prescription drugs.

Lex believes their mother's inability to deal with the marriage breakup may have hurt Ty. "...But I wish that Mom was stronger. That she didn't cry. That she hadn't been so devastated when Dad left. That she'd done that woman-scorned thing and piled up his stuff in the yard and burned it all. Maybe, I think, if she hadn't been so weak, then Ty could have let go of the rage he felt whenever he saw her hurting like that. He could have moved on. And then maybe he would never have made that first attempt with the Advil. And maybe it would have occurred to him to fight back when life got tough."  This perspective demonstrates that Lex isn't fully aware of how much her mother is also suffering because of the divorce. Because Lex and Ty's mother couldn't cope with what happened, she was unable to help her children process the divorce. Her inability to heal placed Ty in a position of having to parent his mother and ultimately he couldn't deal with either her pain or his. 

As time passes and Lex continues her journal, she comes to realize in hindsight that Ty was seriously at risk for suicide; he had already attempted suicide once, he came from a broken home, he was male and he had recently suffered a breakup - all factors that contribute significantly to suicide. Journaling helps Lex begin to piece together how she feels and to understand what happened to her, to Ty and to her family. She is able to face her guilt and forgive herself - a big step towards healing.

In her narrative, Lex hints at the tremendous guilt that is eating away at her. In her journal she writes that when Ty was in hospital after his first suicide attempt, Lex visited him and made him promise that "if you ever feel like that again, like you want to --....But if you do, you have to tell me. Call me, text me, wake me up at three a.m., I don't care. I want to know about it. I'm here for you."  But she now feels that "In the end, I shouldn't have concerned myself with whether he'd keep his promise. I should have thought about whether I'd keep mine." Lex didn't keep her promise because the night Ty called her, she was making out with Steven and although she saw the text she ignored it. Later on at Patrick's funeral, the guilt over what happened resurfaces with the memories of Ty's funeral. She declined to speak at her brother's funeral. "I didn't speak, either. Mom asked me to, but I was afraid that if I got up in front of everybody I would tell them about the promise I had made to Ty, that I would be there for him when he needed me, when he called. The promise I had broken.
Then it would have been me on trial."

By the time she writes her final entry in the journal months later, Lex has come to realize some truths about what happened to Ty; that only Ty could save himself- ultimately he had to make the choice to live. She tells Damian when she intervenes in what she thinks might be another suicide attempt that she knows Ty wasn't calling her for help, but to say goodbye.  Her misplaced guilt results in her breaking up with Steven after Ty's death even though she loves him dearly. Lex feels Steven deserves the truth and she hopes he will forgive her.

Lex is also the one who moves both her parents forward. First she tells her mother, after their trip to Graceland that her life is not over and that she can be happy again. Secondly she decides to give her father the picture Ty never placed in the collage of himself and his dad. This takes a great deal of courage because Lex has to go to her father and his new wife, Megan's home, something she promised herself she would never do. These are some of their unwritten rules.  "I don't call Dad at home. If I did that, it'd be like me saying it's okay, what he did. Like I'm accepting his new life, the one he built without us." She also lies to her father telling him that the picture was not deliberately omitted from the collage by Ty but possibly fell out and that Ty had forgiven his father for leaving. Her therapist tells Lex that this is a very positive sign for her, that she is moving towards acceptance of the divorce and her father's remarriage - both of which are realities to be faced.

The Last Time We Say Goodbye brings into focus two issues many young people today must face - that of suicide and divorce. Through her characters, Hand recognizes how difficult it is for teens to cope with these situations, acknowledging the pain and suffering young people encounter when a family breaks up but also recognizing that healing, forgiveness and acceptance are possible and necessary if life is to go on.  She also integrates some information regarding risk for suicide into the novel and also refers to the stigma attached to suicide when Lex notes that all of Ty's belongings were quickly brought to his house, that his name was stricken from the roster and that his school records were "expunged", "as if they could erase his existence altogether."

The Last Time We Say Goodbye is well written and deeply moving. Young readers will identify with Lex's realistic voice and her struggle to come to terms with her guilt as a suicide survivor and the anger she feels towards her parents. The author writes that she lost her younger brother to suicide in 1999 but that the novel is not autobiographical. Nevertheless, Cynthia Hand's personal experience with suicide has allowed her to write a novel that will touch many readers exactly in they way they need, whether it be to help understand, or to help heal.

Book Details:
The Last Time We Say Goodbye by Cynthia Hand
New York: HarperTeen    2015
386 pp.

Between by Jessica Warman

Between is a story about two ghosts/spirits who spend time "between" Earth and the afterlife solving the mystery of how they died, so they can find eternal peace.

It is the eve of Elizabeth Valchar's 18th birthday and she's spending it on her family's boat with friends, drinking and doing recreational drugs. Elizabeth is attractive and popular, part of the "in" crowd in her high school. She has it all; beauty, a cute boyfriend, a flashy car, and plenty of money. Early in the morning, Liz is awakened by an annoying, persistent, thumping noise outside the boat. When she goes to investigate she makes the shocking discovery that it is her body, face down in the water. Liz soon discovers that while she can see and hear the living, she cannot touch or interact with them in any way.

However, Liz is not alone for long. Her spirit is soon found by another spirit, that of Alex Berg, a boy from her school who was killed a year ago by a hit and run driver. His death was never solved with the identity of the driver unknown. Alex can see and touch Liz and communicate with her. Because Alex lived in another part of town, wasn't wealthy or popular, Liz and her posse ignored Alex. Now in death, Alex can barely contain his contempt for her.

Liz finds that she has no memory of what happened on the night she died, nor of many other details of her life. But she learns that she can slip back into memories, which begin to help her piece together the final months leading up to her death. Together Alex and Liz begin through a series of flashbacks to uncover the truth about what happened on the eve of Liz's eighteenth birthday.

Jessica Warman does a good job of retaining the reader's interest throughout the novel with a well paced narrative that paints a picture of a group of selfish, spoiled teens concerned only with looking good and being popular. There are several mysteries to be solved, and these serve as the hook drawing the reader in. A few examples will suffice. What is the connection between Liz and Alex? Was Liz's death an accident or the result of something more sinister? Some readers may solve these mysteries sooner than others but as the story begins to come together it's not hard to piece together what happened.

As the narrative progresses, we see Liz undergo a process of self-discovery that transforms her from a self-absorbed, spoiled teenager, concerned only about money, looks and status, to a more caring person who is sorry for some of the things she did when she was alive. So the book opens with most of the characters being being genuinely unlikable, including Liz. That changes by the end with Liz having redeemed herself as much as is possible for a ghost.

Between is a book with themes of redemption, loss, love and forgiveness. The premise of the book is what caught my attention and I wasn't disappointed. Some readers might be put off by the length of the book (slightly over 450 pages) but the story is well told in Liz's voice, which is authentic, full of angst and regret at some of her poor choices.

Book Details
Between by Jessica Warman
New York: Walker & Company 2011
454 pp.