Funeral girl

Georgia Richter, 16 and asexual, has an uncanny, secret ability: she can wake the dead with a touch and return them to death with a second touch. Her talent is weirdly apposite, since she lives in her family's funeral home, where corpses are always, ahem, at hand. Things become personal when a classmate, Milo, is killed in a hit-and-run accident and brought to the funeral home. Though she hardly knew him when he was alive, she finds herself drawn into his life in death, and they become tentative friends. But what will happen when she discovers that she can't return Milo to death? Unfortunately, Georgia is not always a sympathetic character: she is solipsistic and judgmental, and she treats her best friend, Amy (who is the only out enby in school), badly. There is, arguably, some justification for this, since Georgia is obsessed with death and terrified of dying. Accordingly, give Ohland's first novel high marks for its unusual premise and vivid characterization of its imperfect protagonist.

Haunted every day by the inescapability of death, Georgia awakens the dead who pass through her family's funeral home, fulfilling their final requests and clinging to their memories. No one in Georgia's family knows about her secret power to speak with ghosts or understands her overwhelming anxiety, especially not Peter, her perfect twin brother, who loves the family business and embraces the expectation that they will one day run it together. When one of their classmates dies, Georgia becomes consumed by her desperation to help the ghost of a boy she barely knew. Touched by the supernatural, this debut grapples with grief and mental health, exploring the differing ways people cope with emotions, how the living memorialize the dead, and who is entitled to mourn them. In the midst of her fixation, asexual Georgia also faces turmoil in her relationships with her empathetic, nonbinary, Chinese American best friend, Amy; her Black ex--best friend, Eileen; and Peter. The story is set in a town with little racial or religious diversity, and Amy and Eileen, the only significant characters of color in the novel, are notably less well developed and well rounded than the White protagonist. However, the narrative handles the heavy topic of death with honest complexity. A moody, contemplative ghost story with uneven characterization. (author's note, discussion questions) (Paranormal. 13-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.