The Girl Who Ignore Ghosts
Kat Preston doesn’t believe in ghosts. Not because she’s never seen one, but because she saw one too many. Refusing to believe is the only way to protect herself from the ghost that tried to steal her life. Kat’s disbelief keeps her safe until her junior year at McTernan Academy, when a research project for an eccentric teacher takes her to a tiny, private island off the coast of Connecticut.The site of a grisly mystery, the Isle of Acacia is no place for a girl who ignores ghosts, but the ghosts leave Kat little choice. Accompanied by her research partner, Evan Kingsley, she investigates the disappearance of Cassie Mallory and Sebastian Radcliffe on their wedding night in 1886. Evan’s scientific approach to everything leaves Kat on her own to confront a host of unbelievables: ancestral curses, powerful spells, and her strange connection to the ghosts that haunt Castle Creighton.But that’s all before Kat’s yanked through a magic portal and Evan follows her. When the two of them awaken 129 years in the past with their souls trapped inside the bodies of two wedding guests, everything changes. Together, Kat and Evan race to stop the wedding-night murders and find a way back to their own time—and their own bodies—before their souls slip away forever.
Review copy provided by the author
Some spoilers ahead
The Girl Who Ignored Ghosts presented an excellent opportunity to continue my streak of reading about ghosts and ghost whisperers. If you look at my reading timeline I could count no less than reading five books detailing about a girl who encountered ghosts and had them for breakfast. Needless to say (and I’ve reiterated myself a thousand times before), I am rather fond of reading (and watching) about ghosts. They have fascinated me since I was a little girl and, frankly, I’ve always wondered if they were real and once upon a time wished to see them. I would freeze for approximately five minutes with my heartbeat growing increasingly louder and at the five-minute mark, I would scream my head off and run to raise all manners of hell within the household. I’d also go for my arnis sticks. What good would they be against transparent beings?
I am meticulous with my horror stories and I want them to scare me shitless that I would sleep with lights on despite being a (debatably) adult. The last time I slept with lights on after reading/watching a horror story was The Lady in Black, Daniel Radcliffe’s post-Harry Potter stint. Did it scare me shitless? It didn’t. That honor is still with the original versions of The Grudge and The Ring. I just don’t like imagining ladies in black emerging from the darkness of my bedroom.
The Girl Who Ignored Ghosts, on the other hand, didn’t scare me at all. But the mystery that needed solving made me stay.
The goal of the book was to solve a 129-year-old mystery and to save someone from dying. No pressure. They mystery itself was interesting. Why would someone want to kill the bride and the groom? Jealousy is the most frequent reason for this kind of murders. But something told me that it was more than that however. These things are as complicated as they come.
While I love mysteries and time travel, it was bit of a stretch for me when the solution of the mystery required the characters to go to another time period. It was rather, ironically, unbelievable. Of course, one could argue that if ghosts existed then time travel was not an impossibility. But I am talking of another angle here. Wouldn’t it have been more of an impact if Kat experienced the past through reading a journal and experiencing some sort of psychometry – she would not be time travelling but just a form of clairvoyant astral projection like Phoebe Halliwell from the TV show, Charmed.
However, the gothic angle of the 19th-century story line was more of an interest to me than Kat’s storyline. It was more exciting and I wish Ms. Tansley would have a little side story (a novella perhaps?) about the lives of Sebastian, and Toria and Alistair. Frankly, I didn’t care much for Sebastian’s bride at all, even if she’s at the [one of] roots of all these. I really wanted to bash Sebastian for how he handled things with Toria. Pish-posh about family tradition and such, you still betrayed Toria. And even if Toria did found love again (which was rushed by the way) with Alistair, I’m still up in arms.
Ignore is more appropriate than to not believe; because if you spent years trying to not believe and keep them at bay… it is a twisted sort of believing but not believing.
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