Pinedale High—where every shade of love stands a ghost of a chance.
Blurb
Holden and Peyton don't expect much from senior year. He probably won't manage to date any guys. She'll still pine over Juliette, the beautiful and unattainable cheerleader. But when they step between class bullies and Oliver, a super-hot transfer student, their year starts to go off the rails.
As a star football player, Oliver hadn't anticipated trouble. Turns out Pinedale High not only comes with bullies, but with new friends, plus the ghost of a Civil War soldier, and a shy naked guy in the library. Between the living and the dead, senior year is about to get interesting.
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Ornery Owl's Review
Rating: Four out of Five Stars
This relatively short book has a lot going on. There are multiple characters with angsty romantic subplots. Two of these characters are ghosts. Only a couple of the other characters can see them. Holden and Juliette try to help their ghost friends, one a nerdy guy who died as a senior in 1989, the other a young Civil War soldier who died in 1865, all while dealing with homophobic and racist bullies and no small amount of personal issues. The story also features Holden's best friend, Peyton, and his epic crush, the seemingly perfect new football star, Oliver.
Each character gets his or her own chapter, narrated in the first-person POV. This technique helps the reader understand the mystery and adds a personal touch to the story. The principal characters are all likable, and the reader (or listener, in my case) hopes they will find a satisfactory solution to their dilemmas.
An incident reporting/checklist narration style bogged down the first couple of chapters. The story tried a bit too hard to establish that these characters were QUEER and PART OF THE RAINBOW COMMUNITY! At that point, I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy the story. When a character's gender identity and/or sexual orientation forms their entire personality, that makes for a boring narrative. I come to care about characters for who they are, not for how they identify or who they are attracted to.
I will never like the term queer, which for most of my life was a homophobic slur used by bullies such as those who hung around outside gay nightclubs, hoping to beat up a few of the guys and harass their female friends. While reading or listening to modern LGBT fiction, I often groan inwardly (or sometimes outwardly, depending on where I am), "Please, for the love of Dionysus, just say GAY! Or lesbian. Or bisexual."
As a minor quibble, I wasn't sure someone from the Civil War era would use the term dick to refer to a man's privates. I'm not invested enough to research this mystery, and I wouldn't dock a star from a story for using a common but possibly more modern term for said dangly bits. The soldier is probably familiar with the common vernacular if he's hanging around potty-mouthed teenagers.
Once it moved beyond reporting and checklist mode, I liked the story. I cared about the characters and their struggles and enjoyed the surprise twist. I won't even hint at what this is because I want other readers and listeners to enjoy it too.
You will probably like this book if you enjoy paranormal mysteries, angsty crushes, and young, snarky characters.
About the Author
USA Today Bestselling author Gabbi Grey lives in beautiful British Columbia where her fur baby chin-poo keeps her safe from the nasty neighborhood squirrels. Working for the government by day, she spends her early mornings writing contemporary, gay, sweet, and dark erotic BDSM romances. While she firmly believes in happy endings, she also believes in making her characters suffer before finding their true love. She also writes m/f romances as Gabbi Black and Gabbi Powell.
I try to get comments published as quickly as possible. I don't always reply to comments on my blog, but I do try to visit as many people as possible when I participate in blog hops and I share links where possible to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and such so others can discover your work. I do read and appreciate your comments.
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I try to get comments published as quickly as possible. I don't always reply to comments on my blog, but I do try to visit as many people as possible when I participate in blog hops and I share links where possible to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and such so others can discover your work. I do read and appreciate your comments.