Bad girls don’t die by Katie Alender

Title: Bad girls don’t die
Author: Katie Alender
Publisher: Hyperion Book CH (April 21, 2009)
352 pages (Hardcover)
Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Have you ever heard of those age old stories where a doll is a ghost? Many times right? That’s exactly what the base of this story is. But such a refreshing take of an age old haunting story.

In the opening chapter Alexis is taking pictures of her old, huge house at 3 in the night. While she is going in after taking the pictures she notices a strange yellow light at one of the windows of her house. This is the first occurrence of something unusual that Alexis notices. Kasey, her 12 year old younger sister is acting stranger by the day. Her eyes suddenly turn from blue to green; she starts using words like oughtn’t and possesses the strength unusual for a 12 year old.

Alexis is a misfit in school, the girl with the pink hair, the one who is always at the sidelines. The cheerleaders group hates her. And Alexis in turn hates them, especially Megan, one of the cheerleaders and one of the popular girls at school. At home too, her mom is too busy with her work to pay much attention to her or Kasey. After a string of incidents she realizes that Kasey is possessed. She tries to find out the mystery behind Kasey’s behavior and the secret that seems to be surrounding her house with the help from an unexpected source. Oh and there is some romance too. Although it isn’t necessary to the story it doesn’t harm either.

For a rebellious teen Alexis is likable and Kasey, in spite of being possessed by the ghost 90% of the time, is quite cute. But then that is exactly what makes the story so creepy. It isn’t the kind where you’ll be so scared that you won’t switch off the lights or jump at any unfamiliar sound. It’s the mystery and the ‘What’s going to happen next’ factor that works so well. Also sentences like ‘It’s going to get worse’ adds to it. Have you ever watched ‘The haunting’ on the Discovery channel? Yes, the same serial which has dramatization of real life ghost stories? This book reminded me of that. It slowly build’s up to a showy kind of an ending.

It’s a page turner for sure. Read it. It’s good.

About the author:
Katie Alender (rhymes with “calendar”!) grew up in South Florida. She is the third of four children (three girls and a boy) and the child of three very loving and encouraging parents.Her first brush with publication was the article “So You Want to Live On Mars?” published in Sassy magazine in December 1991. More recently, she was the head writer on the 48-Hour Film Project “Best of Los Angeles 2007” winner, Project 96-B, and won a Backspace.org short story contest with a story entitled Deliverance Smith. For her day job, she produces televised dog shows, which happens to be the best day job ever.

To read the rest please do check out her site and her blog.