Julie thinks the new Thai exchange student is going to turn out to be a drag. He's nothing like her, has nerdy interests, and looks like a dork in his photo. But when he gets there, he actually looks a lot hotter in person, seems to have no interest in math, and actually wants to socialize with Julie and her friends. And what's more, he's a natural--a lot more like her than she expected, and she even finds him attractive. But when her brother builds a spirit house as a gift for Bia, terrible things start happening--it's like their happy-go-lucky exchange student has been followed to the US by something malevolent, and it's affecting Julie and her family as well. She doesn't know whether they can fight or appease whatever entity is after Bia, but she's also unsure of whether she can trust him. . . .This was the second book I read by Sleator in which the protagonist woman character was self-absorbed and obsessed with popularity, and read as very shallow, so I wondered what was going on there--and I didn't like Bia either. I suspected early on--way before protagonist Julie did--that Bia wasn't the designated exchange student, and I hated how image-conscious he was as well, but when everything started to get scary, I still didn't want them to get hurt and got invested in their escaping the angry spirit. There was a little bit of grossness and actual horror in here, but not so much that it was overwhelming for me as a sensitive kid. I really liked that some of the characters had muddy motivations and weren't necessarily good guys or bad guys.
