City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab (Book Beginnings & Friday 56)

Title: City of Ghosts

Author: Victoria Schwab

Publication: 28 August 2018

Format: ebook

Amazon Description

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Victoria (V.E.) Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue) comes a sweeping, spooky, evocative adventure, perfect for fans of Stranger Things. An instant bestseller!

Ever since Cass almost drowned (okay, she did drown, but she doesn't like to think about it), she can pull back the Veil that separates the living from the dead . . . and enter the world of spirits. Her best friend is even a ghost.

So things are already pretty strange. But they're about to get much stranger.

When Cass's parents start hosting a TV show about the world's most haunted places, the family heads off to Edinburgh, Scotland. Here, graveyards, castles, and secret passageways teem with restless phantoms. And when Cass meets a girl who shares her "gift," she realizes how much she still has to learn about the Veil -- and herself.

And she'll have to learn fast. The city of ghosts is more dangerous than she ever imagined.

Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff

Victoria Schwab has been sitting on my digital cloud for years under both Victoria and VE. I finally read my first with The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue at the beginning of last year and was both eager to read more and also a bit afraid since Addie broke me hard. The mini-challenge for the month for the Alphabet Soup group on Facebook is Ghosts or Witches. I have a lot of both in my possession but decided to use it as a good excuse to finally open up City of Ghosts. 

I pretty much immediately fell for Cassidy and her best friend Jacob ... who happens to be a ghost ... who happened to save her life a year prior. Ever since, she has been able to see other ghosts. Just a cute little story about an awkward unpopular (well, more like socially invisible) girl who can see ghosts and her actually invisible to everyone but her bestie. It was published by Scholastic so how much could it possibly break me? I mean, really. It was "written for" those decades younger than myself. How much damage could a middle grade book do?

And then she laughed and laughed and got broken all over again.

Even before the end of the second chapter. And then again in the third when we do a little flashback deal to how she and Jacob met. And then again ... and ... 

And then she laughed and laughed for real ... and the cycle of laughing and breaking continued.

At least this time the breaking didn't come with ugly crying. On a more feeble day it likely could have, though, and I would have been okay with that just as I was with Addie LaRue.  

This is the first of a trilogy and I've already checked to make sure that at least one of my libraries has digital copies of the next two -- though I'm fairly certain I'll end up buying them "for real" so they can sit on my shelves with the other "keepers." I know I tend to be horrible about series, but it's only a trilogy and they're all out already ... and Jacob and Cassidy have at least thirty-three Rules of Friendship and so far I think I only know seven. I'll have to keep reading to find out what I'm missing.

(I tried to condense the 56 to a shorter blurb. It couldn't be done.)

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Friday 56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice 

& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader