This book is divided into three parts. In the first part, Jessie can see and hear things that nobody else can. She doesn't know why and she hasn't told anybody either. But now she's moved to a new town and the local girls have dared her to spend the night in the cemetery collecting rubbings of grave stones. While there she meets many ghosts who are pretending they are really actors for a "Tombstone Tea" event. This first part was excrutiating to read. Jessie was oblivious and idiotic and the whole thing was entirely too predictable. The second part of the book was told from Paul's view - he died of Typhoid fever many years earlier. That section was much better. The third section goes back to present day and Jessie's story, where she reconnects with her ghostly crush, Paul, and works to face her fears about the ghosts. I would recommend this book to tweens and younger teens, because it reads young. Meh. I really expected this to be much better from all the great reviews on here. The story is basically about a girl named Jessie who can see ghosts who is convinced by a trio of blondes at her new school that if she spends the night in the cemetary and takes rubbings from a list of graves they give her, she'll be initiated into their group. She seems to be perfectly aware that the girls are mean and that it's probably a trick, and she's certainly aware that she can see ghosts and that spending the night in a graveyard is most likely not a great idea, but she decides to do it anyway. Because she's THAT DESPERATE to be part of a group. Then she goes to the graveyard and OMG SHE SEES GHOSTS! There are several ghostly characters introduced, none of which are terribly fascinating, there's an evil ghost that tries to "take" Jessie (this part is kind of a big mess of confusion), and then she has the hot ghostly caretaker, Paul, get her out of there after a confrontation with ALL of the ghosts (Because she's so full of LIFE! And it's WARM! And they WANT some of it!). The book lost what very little hold it had on me then, because suddenly it focused on Paul and his life and how he met the evil ghost and her daughter. And then there's sort of the final battle to get rid of Mrs. Evil Ghost. Jessie accepts her spiritualist powers, discovers the lady who works in the cemetary office has spiritualist powers too (Didn't you know? Wink, wink!), and that's pretty much the end. I guess my main problem with it is it just felt really sloppy. The characters didn't seem very well developed, Paul calls Jessie by the name of one of the other characters at one point (oops), and the action bits were confusing. And the switch from Jessie to Paul was offputting and I felt that Paul's story could have been handled in a different way--perhaps through actual conversation and time spent with Jessie? I just think it could have used a lot more work.
What do You think about Tombstone Tea (2009)?
Surprisingly really good!!! I really enjoyed it major, great plot line =D book two??
—pebbles
amazingly haunting, gave me sooooo many nightmares...spooky...
—katydid
I would think fans of "Ghost Whisper" would enjoy this one.
—giannaxx3
