Got an ARC of this book straight from Harlequin YA Paranormal, and I must say I was very pleasantly surprised by its quality and readability.

Charlotte Silver is the oft-overlooked younger sister in a family of ghost hunters. This is less weird than it sounds. Charlotte's parents do not actually believe in ghosts, they're more interested in disproving claims of hauntings while being unable to explain away a couple of strange "energy patterns" they've come across in their career.

Anyway, Charlotte happens to trigger some actual, somewhat malevolent sleeping ghosties during a filming session with her parents and older sister. The haunting begins in earnest as Charlotte begins to have cryptic dreams about a girl from the past century, and sinister thuds and thumps and thrown furniture begin to hammer in the ghostly message: find the dead girl, and somehow reunite her with her even deader parents.

And meanwhile Charlotte copes with starting her senior year at a new high school where a mysterious tragedy occurred last year, a new friend with big secrets, a fight with her older and much more glamorous sister, the bitchy rival in the AV club and the cute boy also in the AV club... Standard fare for your typical YA novel, very deftly handled.

The book's weakness lies in its very-vanilla themes and storyline: nothing big is at stake, nobody is evil, no one's life is risked and very little happens in the climax. YA books these days tend to push the envelope when it comes to dark themes and high stakes - for example, Sarah Rees Brennan's "The Demon's Lexicon" is in a completely different league compared to this. Perhaps it's not always necessary to go dark and dangerous to be a good book, but the low conflict level in this one did detract from my ability to care what happens to Charlotte. I always knew she would be fine.

The book's strength is definitely in its solid narrative skills and likeable cast of characters. I can see why there will be two more books about Charlotte Silver. Recommended for younger teens. ( )

I love it when I find a book that makes me sit down and not wish to get back up. A book that I totally forget that I’m reading and turning pages. Those are rare and far between. Well this is one of those books. The author Mara Purnhagen has that special something in her writing style that captured me, it’s nice and easy without any fluffy fancy words added. I enjoy a book that tells me a story and I don’t have to break out the dictionary because the writer just discovered the thesaurus.
Past Midnight is about paranormal activity, a genre that I think is lacking in YA books. Charlotte is the daughter of paranormal investigators that have a TV show. They have just moved to a new town and Charlotte is trying to fit in, hide the fact that her parents are odd and settle some ghostly activity as well.

( )

Charlotte just wants to be a normal teenager, but her ghost hunting parents make it hard. Pretty soon Charlotte is knee-deep in ghosts who are following her, friends who need to reach a dead friend, and what to where to prom.

It's a fun story with a coming-of-age theme: finding and keeping friends, dealing with parents, and a little mystery thrown in! ( )

Review for books 1 and 2 of the Past Midnight series

I've always been a fan of ghost stories, even when they terrified me to the point of huddling under the covers with only a tiny air hole open at top, so not even a ghostly breeze could touch me.*

Thing is, I've loved good spooky stories without being overly horrifying or gory, but sadly I haven't seen many good ones crop up in middle grade or young adult fiction over the past few years.

Enter Mara Purnhagen, who has written creepy ghost stories that make me want to burn the candles late into the night as I read, even with the possibility that I won't be able to sleep in a creaking house later. The premise struck me immediately—the daughter of ghost debunkers is followed home by the spooks that apparently don't exist—the writing and characterization are solid enough to provide a captivating story.

While her books will probably be classified as paranormal romance, I prefer to think of them as magical realism. These ghosts are the goosebumpily realistic kind that could potentially happen to anyone—if you believe in ghosts. Maybe even if you didn't.

Both books are good, solid stories, though I was more captivated by the first, Past Midnight. There is also a short story, Raising the Dead, touted book 1.5, that I've downloaded to my Kindle but still waits to be read.

Overall, I enjoy this series and look forward to Purnhagen's forthcoming titles.


*I haven't done that since I was a kid. Well, not really.

Thanks to Harlequin Teen for review copies of both books ( )

RATING: 3 stars.

Even I am astonished for giving three stars to this book. Why? Because it was short and it lacked some serious character and story development.

But... I really liked the idea behind the story. Charlotte, the main character is completely human. That's right! No weird powers and no supernatural blood flowing through her veins. She's just a normal girl, who just happens to be the daughter of two ghost-story debunkers. They even have their own show. But then, after a filming in a supposedly haunted location weird things start happening to Charlotte. Ghost-related things.

So I thought the author could have developed some parts of the story better. Everything felt rushed (especially the ending) and most of the characters had little to no personality whatsoever. That was the main problem with this book, it was just too short.

The author had this great, fresh idea for a new YA paranormal series (without insta-romance, too!) but I felt like the story was missing scenes and everything was, as I said above, rushed. The end of the book seemed a bit unrealistic and confusing too. Still, overall I liked to read about Charlotte and her scientist parents and I loved how the author treated the supernatural elements of the plot. Maybe we'll get more character development in future books. ( )