The murder of a queer teen boy causes a queer girl to question whom she trusts in this stunning small-town YA mystery from Eisner Award and Printz Honor recipient Mariko Tamaki (Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me; This One Summer).
As a ghost, 17-year-old Todd Mayer "[takes] up no space," much as he did while alive. His "practiced exterior of not caring about anything" only ever cracked for "the boy with the mop of hair and the luggish smile." But as he recalls his death, Todd reveals that "he died without ever kissing anyone he loved." Mr. McVeeter, a gay teacher, was the only person he could confide in--and thus becomes a prime suspect in Todd's murder.
Sixteen-year-old Georgia Walker met Todd only once: when he stood on her doorstep, asking for her brother Mark. But Mark won't talk about Todd or the mysterious bag of money in his room. Georgia feels "super dense," like she isn't asking the right questions: "there's always some whole other layer of f***ed up you don't even know to ask questions about because you don't even know it’s there."
Tamaki's authentic characters demonstrate the anxiety of vulnerability, the desire to feel needed and the horrible mistakes good people can make to look cool. The two myopic detectives' indifferent investigation underscores how misunderstood Todd--bullied and silenced for being gay--became. Todd's darkly poetic observations set a chilling atmosphere (such as watching his body moved "like a piece of luggage") while a sapphic love story brightens Georgia's narrations ("We're sitting right next to each other. And my heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my eyeballs."). A lush, haunting and gripping read. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer