So creepy, but good. ( )

If you like ghost stories and the legend of Bloody Mary you're going to have a blast reading this one.

A solid horror novel, filled with action and creepy imagery. Well written and with fleshed-out characters. It's always refreshing to read clever, empathising teenage girls that love and support each other without being written as pefrect little dolls. I absolutely LOVED it. If it had an actual ending I would rate it 5/5 stars. Too bad it has that tacky cover that makes it seem like it would be a more campy, badly written story. I almost skipped it because of that.

I don't really understand why it wasn't released as one novel instead of a series. It's fast paced and sucks you in, I almost felt compelled to read it in one go. One moment I was going to peruse through a single chapter before going to bed, and suddenly the book had already ended and I was pretty bummed not to have the second installment ready at hand.

Now I know, many books are easy to read and that doesn't speak much about their content -far from it. Sometimes it's the second worst compliment you can pay a novel (the first being that «well, at least it was short”). But it does immerse you into the story, the action is constant and the mystery tones are intriguing. After all, it is a bloody Mary story. It tells you so from its title. It's filled with ghosts and gore and teenage girls. You know what you're in for, it's not like you're going in expecting a Bonjour Tristesse, or a Zone One kind of book. And it freaking delivers everything its premise promises.
Except for a true ending.

But you'll read the second book too so maybe that's not a bad thing after all. Because the storytelling was so addictive I didn't want it to end, and secretly I was glad to have an excuse to stay longer in this world. Rotting fingernails, foggy mirrors and candles in the night and all. ( )

Review up later. ( )

Excellent YA horror. When I finished it, I wanted to read the next one right away. ( )

I really really really enjoyed this.

I love a good ghost story and this was an amazing ghost story with a particularly terrifying ghost. The sheer relentlessness of Bloody Mary and the danger she posed to the main characters even when she wasn't physically present was so well-done. This isn't a story that messes around; the ghost appears and things get serious real quick and for the most part, the characters act in very realistic ways to the situation. You can feel their frustrations and fears, their despair, their desire to help one another even if they may not agree at all about what "helping" constitutes. I love how the personalities of the characters were exhibited through their actions...they felt like real people, with real lives--messy, sometimes cruel, sometimes gentle, sometimes frustrated, sometimes desperate to do anything and everything to save each other.

The characters are all teen girls. I love reading books where the focus is on girl/women characters...where their friendships are deep and complex and have nothing at all to do with boys. In fact I think there are only two or three boy characters who say more than a few words throughout the novel and I love it. I love stories about girls that are really and truly ABOUT GIRLS.

The pacing was excellent throughout; there wasn't much lag at all. I find in some YA pacing can be an issue because it tends to create a narrative imbalance--time is spent on things that aren't at all relevant to what the story is trying to accomplish. Not this book. It's so clean and sharp and, like Bloody Mary herself, relentless. You can't help but to keep reading.

I'm embarrassed that I've waited this long to read one of Monahan's books but now I can't wait to read more!! ( )