Queen of the Dead (Ghost and the Goth Series #2)

by Stacey Kade

Overview

After being sent back from the light, Alona Dare - former homecoming queen, current Queen of the Dead - finds herself doing something she never expected: working. Instead of spending days perfecting her tan by the pool (her typical summer routine when she was, you know, alive), Alona must now cater to the needs of other lost spirits. By her side for all of this - ugh - "helping of others" is Will Killian: social outcast, seer of the dead, and someone Alona cares about more than she'd like.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781423147350
Publisher:	Disney Press
Publication date:	06/07/2011
Series:	Ghost and the Goth Series , #2
Sold by:	DISNEY PUBLISHING WORLDWIDE -EBKS
Format:	eBook
File size:	528 KB
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Stacey Kade (www.staceykade.com) is an award-winning corporate copywriter and successful adult sci-fi romance writer (as Stacey Klemstein). She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and three retired racing greyhounds. The Ghost and the Goth was her first YA novel. She is hard at work on Book Three of the Ghost and the Goth trilogy.

Editorial Reviews

Will is a ghost talker who is dating a ghost, Alona. He is excited to meet another ghost talker, Mina, with whom he can relate. She tries to convince him to stop helping ghosts. Alona worries that Will will not help her, and she ends up taking someone's body to get his attention. This book is fantastic and captures the complex social interactions of teens while incorporating ghosts. Reviewer: Monica McGrath, Teen Reviewer

VOYA - Monica McGrath

Will Killian has a secret: he can interact with the dead. This "gift" has left Will isolated and confused with only his spirit guide, Alona, for constant companionship. With Alona's help, Will tries to act as an intermediary, helping ghosts make peace with whatever it is that is keeping them earthbound. Things change when Mina enters the scene and introduces Will to The Order, an elite group of ghost talkers who use their paranormal powers to clear ghosts away. Everything Will thought he understood about himself hangs in the balance, and he is faced with a choice: to serve the dead at the expense of the living or to serve the living with no thought for the dead. Fearful of losing his help, Alona takes desperate measures to remind Will of their relationship. The second installment in The Ghost and the Goth series, this novel is sharp and compelling. Told in alternating first-person narrative between Will and Alona, the story progresses quickly and leaves the reader begging for more. Enough questions remain unanswered at the close of the novel to guarantee at least one more volume in the series. Romance is elegantly balanced with intrigue, creating a plot that will appeal to most teens, male and female alike. Readers who enjoy the paranormal in any form will love this book. Reviewer: Jennifer McConnel

VOYA - Jennifer McConnel

Gr 8–11—As this sequel to The Ghost and the Goth (Hyperion, 2010) opens, Alona and Will are waiting for the ghost of Mrs. Ruiz so they can help send her into the light. However, Mina Blackwell is trying to earn her full membership in the Order, and containment of Mrs. Ruiz was to be her final test. She has a plan, though: if Will helps her, she'll share information about what he is and the shadowy Order. The idea that he's not the only ghost-talker staggers Will, and he agrees to help her. Meanwhile, it seems that Alona's mother is moving on just two months after her daughter's death; she is throwing away all of Alona's memorabilia. Distraught, the teen flees to her father's house, where she witnesses him and his new wife rejoicing over the upcoming birth of a new baby girl. Alona decides that the only way to stop her parents from forgetting about her is to send them a message they can't ignore, but her scheme backfires and she is sucked into the body of a coma patient and can't get out. Kade has created interesting and engaging characters in the ghost-talker and his spirit guide. They handle the drama in their lives in a believable fashion, and the well-paced plot pulls readers into a novel in which the dead are still capable of surprising the living. This excellent novel stands alone, but readers will want to read the first book to find out more about the characters.—Heather Miller Cover, Homewood Public Library, AL

School Library Journal

Former cheerleader, fashionista and "mean girl supreme" and current spirit guide Alona Dare and social recluse and ghost-talker Will Killian trade their flirtatious banter for a more serious dilemma in this sequel toThe Ghost and the Goth(2010).

Alona's only been dead two months, and already her recovering alcoholic mother is throwing out her prized mementos and her absent father and his ex-wife (a.k.a. Step-Mothra) are having a baby. Now could Will be interested in fellow ghost-talker Mina Blackwell and her Ghostbuster-like boxes meant to capture spirits? When Alona enters a comatose body, she only hopes to communicate with her selfish parents and teach Will a lesson, but she ends up getting stuck in the process. Once again the teens' alternating voices give differing perspectives. Will learns about the Order of the Guardians, a secret society of ghost-talkers bent on ridding the world of unsafe spirits, as well as his dead father's role in it, and selfish, immobile Alona contemplates her own karma and why she was left on Earth. The tension mounts when the Order comes to consider Alona dangerous. While this sequel lacks some of the amusement provided by the first book, plenty of back story keeps readers engaged in the continuing story line.

With room for a third book, who's Alona gonna call?Ghost and the Gothlovers.(Paranormal. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews