The Lonely Dead by April Henry
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

On a short-cut home through a local park, 17-y.o. Adele, comes across her estranged friend, Tori, crying and distraught. After talking to her for a while, trying to figure out what is wrong, Adele notices a very important fact about Tori. She’s dead. She’s dead and sitting atop her recently buried remains.

That’s right. Adele sees dead people but not in the way you would think. She only sees them in the location where their remains are. The spirits, if you will, are attached to their earthly remains via a cord of mist that extends from the backs of the their heads. Therefore, they are tethered to that location and do not necessarily bandy about haunting different places.

Adele knows that Tori has been murdered and she needs to report the body to the police. Fearing she will be considered a suspect she makes an anonymous call from a payphone and returns home to her life.

Turns out there are things called security cameras and the cops figure out it was her that made the call. This and the fact that everyone witnessed a big fight between Adele and Tori on the night of her death makes Adele a prime suspect. She therefore realizes she needs to pair with Tori to figure out what happened to her so she can clear herself and bring the real killer to justice.

This book and I did not get along. As you can most likely guess from the tone of above-mentioned gifs.

The synopsis sounded promising. A paranormal mystery and I guess, in a way, that is what it was except it wasn’t super mysterious and the paranormal elements were a bit simplistic. I think maybe this book would work better for a younger age group who is perhaps just getting into paranormal mystery stories, as someone new to the genre wouldn’t have much to compare this too.

This being said, while I think the writing works best for a Tween category, the topics don’t really mesh well with that age group. There is a lot of drinking, binge drinking, talk of binge drinking, sex, party scenes, etc.

So, yeah, maybe not the best thing to buy your 12-year old. Additionally, the overall feel of the book made me uncomfortable. This could completely be me, a personal preference or what have you, decide for yourself but the mental health rep…

I wasn’t crazy about it. Adele has been diagnosed with schizophrenia for which she has been prescribed medication. She takes this medication up until the time our story starts when she admits to secretly stopping and hiding the pills. She goes on to say on numerous occasions how much better her life is now that she is off it even though now she is seeing things again whereas before she wasn’t. The medication had been dulling her gift to see these dead things.

This is a topic returned to over and over again in the book and I’m just not sure if glorifying going off prescribed medications for serious mental health issues in a teen book is a good thing?

Seriously, though, I don’t know. Maybe I was reading into it wrong or I am taking it too literally. I don’t know. I have never suffered from a hallucinatory disorder personally so may not be the best judge on this. Besides this overriding issue, however, I did have a few other problems with it. The ‘mystery’ was pretty apparent from the beginning. The build-up was too long and the conclusion too rushed. There was a lesson in a health class about binge drinking that just got brought up over and over again that was sort of lame. Things got really wacky at the end. Meh. Just not for me.

However, if this synopsis sounds interesting to you, I want you to pick it up. I want to hear what other people think of this and the mental health stuff in particular. I seriously hope my review doesn’t stop anyone from picking this up. For me, it didn’t work, but I am sure some people out there will really enjoy it.

Thank you so much to the publisher, Henry Holt and Co., for providing me with an e-ARC to read and review. I always appreciate the opportunity to provide my opinion.

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