Invisible Ghosts

Author: Robyn Schneider

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Genre/Themes/Demo: YA, Supernatural, Contemporary

Release Date: June 5th 2018

Page Count: 320

Format: ARC via the publisher

ISBN: 9780062568106

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*Disclaimer* An ARC of Invisible Ghosts by Robyn Schneider was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not effect my review in any way.

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Synopsis

Rose Asher believes in ghosts. She should, since she has one for a best friend: Logan, her annoying, Netflix-addicted brother, who is forever stuck at fifteen. But Rose is growing up, and when an old friend moves back to Laguna Canyon and appears in her drama class, things get complicated. Jamie Aldridge is charming, confident, and a painful reminder of the life Rose has been missing out on since her brother’s death. She watches as Jamie easily rejoins their former friends–a group of magnificently silly theater nerds–while avoiding her so intensely that it must be deliberate. Yet when the two of them unexpectedly cross paths, Rose learns that Jamie has a secret of his own, one that changes everything. Rose finds herself drawn back into her old life–and to Jamie. But she quickly starts to suspect that he isn’t telling her the whole truth. All Rose knows is that it’s becoming harder to choose between the boy who makes her feel alive and the brother she isn’t ready to lose.

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What I Liked

The unexpected paranormal. I don’t know how I missed the fact that this book had a paranormal twist to it. I just assumed by the synopsis that Rose could see the ghost of her brother because that was the only way she knew how to cope with his death, but nope…she could actually see his ghost. This kind of threw me at first, but in the end, I was totally okay with the unexpected paranormal aspect of this story.

The concept. As mentioned above, the paranormal aspect of this novel caught me off guard, but I did really enjoy the concept. I loved that it twisted the expected into the unexpected. Usually you get people in mourning who are imagining their lost loved ones, but in this case they were actually seeing and communicating with them. I really enjoyed this as a concept.

The relationships. I found the relationship between Rose and her brother very heartwarming. You could tell that they both genuinely cared for one another and it truly broke them having to be separated by life and death. I loved that they weren’t perfect. They both struggled to let go of one another and therefore cause strains in their relationship. This made it feel like a real and believable brother/sister bond.

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What I Didn’t Like

But also, the relationships. As much as I loved Jamie as a character, I did not really enjoy the relationship between him and Rose. I understand that they were best friends as children, but I still felt as though their reuniting after many years and falling in love with each other right away was a little too insta-love and predictable for me. 

The lack of explanation. Why could both Rose and Jamie see and communicate with ghosts/spirits? Seriously though…it was never explained…it was just a thing that we were meant to accept. I just would have liked a little explanation as to why this was possible for them.

The repetitive writing. I counted 4 TIMES that the most overused cliché YA sentence of “I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding” was used. In one instance they were literally only separated by a single page. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes each time it happened and the fact that it happened multiple times was unfortunate.

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Overall, Invisible Ghosts was an enjoyable read that was really fast paced and that contained an interesting concept. However, there were a few things that clearly didn’t work for me that stopped this book from being something that I completely enjoyed.

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About The Author

Robyn Schneider is the bestselling author of The Beginning of Everything and Extraordinary Means, which have earned numerous starred reviews, appear on many state reading lists, and are published in over a dozen countries. Her next book, Invisible Ghosts, comes out in June from Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins. Robyn is a graduate of Columbia University, where she studied creative writing, and the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, where she earned a Masters of Bioethics. She lives in Los Angeles, California, but also on the internet.

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Thank you for reading!