Thirty-six-year-old Irene Dunphy didn't plan on dying any time soon, but that’s exactly what happens when she makes the mistake of getting behind the wheel after a night bar-hopping with friends. She finds herself stranded on earth as a ghost, where the food has no taste, the alcohol doesn’t get you drunk, and the sex...well, let’s just say “don’t bother.” To make matters worse, the only person who can see her—courtesy of a book he found in his school library—is a fourteen-year-old boy genius obsessed with the afterlife.
Unfortunately, what waits in the Great Beyond isn’t much better. Stuck between the boring life of a ghost in this world and the terrifying prospect of three-headed hell hounds, final judgment, and eternal torment in the next, Irene sets out to find a third option—preferably one that involves not being dead anymore. Can she wipe the slate clean and get a second chance before it’s too late?
I picked this book up wanting a break from Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies and it was a good choice too.
Irene, our protagonist, is stranded as a ghost after she had been in an accident. Well what do you expect to happen when you get behind a wheel after a night of bar hopping? But it takes her sometime to catch up to what had happened to her. It was only when she ‘bumped’ into a fourteen-year old Jonah, who is obsessed with anything to do with death and afterlife, that she is given a crash course on her new ‘life’.
Sounds interesting or mundane? I suppose it depends on your take of ghosts, and for me it was interesting to take the ride with Irene. Finding out the rules that even ghosts have to follow and why humans cannot see ghosts were some of the interesting theories that this book presents to its readers. Irene is a pretty interesting girl. She doesn’t do anything halfway – not even getting drunk. To watch her struggle with her new form, getting used to it or even trying to find better options was actually kind of fun. And what do I say about Jonah. He is so obsessed with death that it made me wonder if he was a bit abnormal. Yet he too is a quirky character that I enjoyed reading about. Putting these two together, their dynamics is a hilarious one even though I thought Irene was being outright rude to Jonah towards the beginning.
The plot is simple and straightforward and because I haven’t read a similarly themed book before, I couldn’t really take a guess at what the author might throw at me next. It was fun finding out though. The narration style is simple and flows smoothly. The mix of dry humour and lots of one liners woven into the plot made it much more fun to read.
Overall, an entertaining book that provided me with a good change and couple of hours of complete enjoyment.
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