Actual rating: 3.5.I really liked 60% of this book, the first 60%. It's hard to do because I'm such a sucker for endings and that's where I place all my hopes and dreams and fuzzy feelings.
The end really didn't do anything for me. It was clear that this was part of a series, not just because I know there's a series out there, but by eighty percent through, we weren't wrapping anything up. But I felt like there were no questions really answered at the end. We find out some of the baddies, one of which I did not see coming, but we don't really know anything to our larger questions. I'm fine with that in a series.
The ending didn't do anything for me because we were finally given some action then nothing again but planning for a looooong stretch then a little bit of action to wrap it up. The planning stage just lasted way too long for me.
On the plus side, I really, really liked Chloe. This is a girl who gets sarcasm and wields it well. She has a few moments where I'm like, no, no Chloe, let's not do that. But with current YA heroines, she's clearly ahead of the curve in the YA Paranormal field.
Simon and Derek...not so much. Simon was bland. I also got the impression that Chloe had no interest and he kept getting into her space. Now, that may be totally wrong and maybe I was impressing upon Chloe too much, but he was bland and space invadey.
Derek was a totally ass in the first half of the book. He gets marginally better by the end, but I still can't get over the fact that he threw Chloe against the wall. He seemed too caveman-esque to me, grunting and glaring. Also, if he's the beast they're talking about at the end, why not just kill him? I mean, they killed Liz. They don't seem to have much of a problem with it.
The action scenes, for how short they were, were done very well. You really got a sense of adrenaline when Chloe was running and freaking out. It's probably why I wanted to see a ton more action scenes.
The settings got confusing though. Maybe it's because I've never been in too many crawlspaces, but I could not imagine that setting in the least. In fact, for a lot of the book, I was never too grounded in where we were. The crawlspace though, where Chloe spends a good deal of her time, just didn't have any real descriptions beside crawlspace and dark.
I did give the book 3.5 stars because I really do like the book, but I feel like one more edit around could have made me love the book. There were too many lulls for me and the concept didn't get the love it deserved. I'm biased because seeing ghosts is a storyline I love and work with, but we didn't get to actually see much of the ghosts. We heard a lot about Chloe freaking out that she could see ghosts. Understandable. But I wanted more ghost confrontations.
