http://www.zomboscloset.com/zombos_closet_of_horror_b/2011/06/ghosts-of-coronado... ( )

this is a very nice pirates/ghosts/highschool love/ story, rather straightforward, not many surprises in it, but nicely told! ( )

A hundred years ago the ship Black Lady sank. Now the musuem in Coronado Bay is having an exhibit of the treasures brought up from the bottom of the sea. In comes 16 year old Maya Blair who has been able to see ghosts since she was a child. Blake Hennessey is one of the people who died on the ship and is drawn to the museum items and meets Maya. Enter Gavin Hamlin also one of the ghost from the Black Lady. Gavin was a sorcer and Blake was trying to stop him when the ship went down and both die in an untimely manner. Now with Maya, Gavin has the power to come back to life and Maya and Blake struggle to stop him.Decent read and wasn't a bad way to spend an afternoon in the sun. ( )

A hundred years ago the ship Black Lady sank. Now the musuem in Coronado Bay is having an exhibit of the treasures brought up from the bottom of the sea. In comes 16 year old Maya Blair who has been able to see ghosts since she was a child. Blake Hennessey is one of the people who died on the ship and is drawn to the museum items and meets Maya. Enter Gavin Hamlin also one of the ghost from the Black Lady. Gavin was a sorcer and Blake was trying to stop him when the ship went down and both die in an untimely manner. Now with Maya, Gavin has the power to come back to life and Maya and Blake struggle to stop him.Decent read and wasn't a bad way to spend an afternoon in the sun. ( )

The story begins with a ship being wrecked in a storm just off the coast of Coronado Bay in the nineteenth century. We’re then swiftly brought forward in time to modern day Coronado Bay, where we meet our heroine, Maya Blair. Maya’s your average teenager, with one very unusual gift; she has the ability to see the dead. Other than that, her life is pretty normal, she goes to school, has a rather unsavoury ex-boyfriend and works in her parents restaurant.

Everything changes when the local museum decides to put on an exhibition about the ship-wreck of the Black Lady, and accidentally unleashes the spirits of its former inhabitants, some of whom are less friendly than others. When Maya and her class visit the exhibition, her ability is spotted by two members of the crew; Gavin Hamlin and Blake Hennessey, and one of them sees this as an opportunity to restore the crew to their bodies and in the process unleash a destructive malevolence on the world. Maya founds herself caught up in a game where she could be the unwilling sacrifice unless Blake and her friends can stop Gavin and the rest of the ship’s crew from getting their ghostly hands on her.
This was quite a quick and fun book to read. It’s not a complex story, but it does have lots of twists and turns, especially as Maya, despite her gift, is not immediately aware of the fact the both Gavin and Blake are actually dead. She just concludes that they’re boys with interesting dress sense. Gavin’s your archetypal bad boy and naturally he uses this to his advantage once he realises that Maya seems to be attracted to that image, whereas, Blake is a nice boy and the reader is rooting for him, even though he is a ghost, because we know that if she makes the wrong choice, it could be a potentially fatal mistake. Needless to say, there is the obligatory battle at the end, which probably won’t be as nail-biting as the last instalment of Harry Potter but still, it is quite dramatic.

Not necessarily a series I’ll be following, but if supernatural young adult fiction is your thing, then you will thoroughly enjoy this book, and no doubt will be looking forward to reading what happens to Maya next. ( )