*3.5 stars

“Ellie had a ghost dog companion. When it came to strange stuff, she could not be too open-minded.”

I had been hearing a couple of people talk about this book and it seemed right up my alley. I did enjoy it, but not as much as I was expecting to.

The story follows this young girl named Elatsoe who goes by Ellie. She can raise ghosts from the dead, which is a skill that has been passed down from generation to generation. After her cousin passed away in a supposed car accident, Ellie finds herself having to use her powers because his death may not have been an accident. Her and her family find themselves in the town of Willowbee, which presents itself as this perfect, comforting small town, but may have darker secrets lurking just beneath the surface.

This really is a story that is perfect for this time of the year. It feels so whimsical, magical and just so full of love and hope. I did enjoy the atmosphere of this one and found myself fully immersed into the world while reading.

I also loved that while this feels like such a magical story, it still took the time to include a lot of social commentary, more specifically, the racism that Natives face. Ellie has a couple of instances where she is looked at as a potential criminal because of her race and how she feels that isn’t right. There is also talk of how Natives had their land stolen by the very same people who show contempt towards them today. I love when books include these important topics, while also not letting the story get too heavy from it.

“Why did strangers take one look at her and think, This person is no good? Some of them probably treated all youth like potential troublemakers. That didn’t explain why, when she and Jay went to the local mall, loss prevention agents and security guards only followed Ellie around department stores.”

I did enjoy Ellie as a character. She was easy to like and root for and I actually felt that she made good decisions for a lot of the story. It was also nice to see an asexual character in a story like this because I rarely see it. It wasn’t made a huge deal, so there was just this casual queerness to the story, which I loved.

With the death of her cousin, the story does a good job showing how people grieve. We meet Ellie’s cousin’s wife, and she is having a really hard time accepting that he is gone. That causes her to make some bad decisions, but I enjoyed seeing that because grief isn’t always sitting and crying, sometimes it makes people not think clearly and make rash decisions.

Now, with all of that being said, I didn’t love this like I expected to. I think my biggest issue with this is while it is being labeled as YA, it reads really young. The first half I would say reads almost just like middle grade, it was hard to believe that Ellie was close to graduating high school. She felt like a ninth grader to me at the most. I will say that by the second half, I could see it being YA, but definitely the younger end of YA. I don’t think this is a bad thing at all. There have been tons of conversations about the lack of young YA and this one definitely would be perfect for people looking for books in that age range. However, I wasn’t expecting it and I’m not a big middle grade reader. I wish I would have picked this up at another time when I was more in the mood for it.

I also had a hard time truly connecting to the story, which is not the same as relating. I don’t have to relate to a story to enjoy it, but I do have to connect and I just didn’t with this one. It’s a good read, but not one I will probably remember a couple of months from now.

I still recommend this, especially to younger audiences. I think a lot of people will enjoy this even if it wasn’t my cup of tea.

“Cursed men drink blood indiscriminately, but Willowbee puts a bounty on the Indigenous, the poor, and the vulnerable.”

CW for death.