I love Laurie Notaro! I discovered her nonfiction books several years ago and they made me laugh until I cried. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from a novel but since I love Dave Barry's novels I decided to give it a chance and I am so glad I did.Ghost Girl is tragic, funny, sad and wonderful. I couldn't put it down. I sacrificed my extra hour of sleep to finish the book. Lucy's life was pleasantly boring. She worked as a dental hygienist, was engaged to her produce manager boyfriend and owned a shelter dog. Then in three days her world fell apart. Her fiance kicked her out by tossing her possessions on the lawn and she ends up fighting a homeless woman for her wedding gown, she is fired and then killed by a bus.When she wakes up she learns that she is considered SD (Suddenly Demised) and needs to go to ghost school. Let's just say Lucy is pretty unhappy with this turn of events and her funeral makes her even grumpier. Then she learns she will need to right a wrong from her life in order to 'move on'This is a unique and witty look at the afterlife. We learn about fake psychics and why you shouldn't go to the light. I loved it. I previously had read only one book by Laurie Notaro, WE THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE PRETTIER: TRUE TALES OF THE DORKIEST GIRL ALIVE, a collection of laugh out loud essays that made me put her on my look-for-everything-else-she's-written list. That was in 2008, and while I don't remember much about it now other than the fact that I really liked it, SPOOKY LITTLE GIRL definitely lived up to that memory. It's not really laugh out loud funny, it's more subtle, but certainly amusing and enjoyable, enough that I sat up past my bedtime last night, fighting the usually welcome effects of a sleeping pill, because I kept wanting to read just one more chapter before setting it aside. Lucy Fisher has just come home from a vacation in Hawaii with two friends, sort of a last hurrah before getting married, to discover everything she owns in the front yard of the house where she lived with Martin, her fiance. Everything except her dog, Tulip, who is inside, but Lucy can't get to her because the locks have been changed. Martin won't answer the door, even though Lucy thinks she sees him through a window, and won't answer his phone. Less than twenty-four hours later and she's been fired from her job for forgetting to make a deposit and failing a drug test, even though she knows she hasn't taken any drugs. With no other choice besides her best friend's couch, she packs what she can in her truck, leaves the rest in her friend's garage, and drives to her sister's house a couple of hours away. Where soon after she is hit by a bus, and wakes up in a dormitory where she's suddenly in a spectral school, learning how to be a ghost. Before she can move to her final destination, The State (and not that white light that we've all heard so much about), she must complete an assignment on earth. Under the watchful eye of their teacher, Ruby, Lucy and her classmates learn the fine arts of being a spectral, er, being, such as how to draw energy from electrical appliances and manifest into their corporeal forms, how to move a physical object,etc. She also attends her funeral, which is a huge disappointment. Why aren't her friends and coworkers present and mourning her passing? Finally it's time for her assignment, and she goes to bed that night eager and excited, convinced she'll be doing something to help her sister. The last place she expects to wake up the next morning is on the couch in her old house, where Martin seems to have completely forgotten she existed and has moved on with another woman. Lucy doesn't know exactly what her assignment is and all Ruby can tell her is it will eventually come to her. Along the way, she learns about herself and matures as a person, so to speak. Oh, and Tulip! The best part about haunting Martin and his new “domestic partner” is being reunited with her dog, who can actually see and hear her. I don't want to tell you any more of the plot but this is a wonderfully engaging and enjoyable book. In this age of the internet and everybody being so connected, the idea that the characters are so disconnected was a little hard to fathom, but if you just go with it, it's well worth it in the end.
What do You think about Ein Geist Zum Verlieben (2011)?
This book started out cute but dragged for about a quarter of the book.
—Mira
mildly entertaining. predictable. not as humourous as i'd hoped.
—barbieneika
Love this author, struggled a little with this book…
—xaviellehardin
