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A review by pagesofpins
A Properly Unhaunted Place by William Alexander
4.0
Really delightful. An alternate universe in which ghosts populate every town, and because books are links to both the past and information, librarians are "appeasement specialists" who work on getting the ghosts of the past to interact peaceably with life in the present. Except in Ingot, the only unhaunted town. (No one knows why.)
Rosa is angry that her appeasement librarian mother has moved them to a town with no ghosts after her father died. She quickly meets Jasper, who helps his dad with the local Renaissance festival, hates attention, and has never seen a ghost. Together, they discover that Ingot is perhaps not as unhaunted as they thought.
Seamlessly woven into the story we have: how Rosa deals with anger about her life and uses it to prompt herself to action, facts about science and history casually thrown in, how hard it can be to deal with the past and its losses, the dangers of mob mentality, and no-big-deal-diversity all over the place. I'll be recommending it as a spooky read in fall, no question.
Rosa is angry that her appeasement librarian mother has moved them to a town with no ghosts after her father died. She quickly meets Jasper, who helps his dad with the local Renaissance festival, hates attention, and has never seen a ghost. Together, they discover that Ingot is perhaps not as unhaunted as they thought.
Seamlessly woven into the story we have: how Rosa deals with anger about her life and uses it to prompt herself to action, facts about science and history casually thrown in, how hard it can be to deal with the past and its losses, the dangers of mob mentality, and no-big-deal-diversity all over the place. I'll be recommending it as a spooky read in fall, no question.