Beating Heart by A.M. Jenkins

Guys, this book was not that good.  That's all there really is to say.  I was disappointed.  But I suppose my expectations were somewhat high--this purports to be a ghost story with some sort of romantic element, and the last book I read with that basic idea turned out to be one of my top ten YA books of ALL TIME (A Certain Slant of Light, by Laura Whitcomb--I hear she's working on/about to publish another book, I could basically die with excitement and anticipation)--SO I was going into it assuming it would be somewhat similar in awesomeness.  And then it was just some book.  Meh.

It's hardly worth summarizing, but okay:  This teenage boy moves into this old house with his recently divorced mom and little sister.  There is a teenage girl ghost in the house.  She died a tragic and mysterious early death, which becomes less mysterious because she basically tells it to you in these weird 5-words-on-a-page stream-of-consciousness whimsicalities, and it all happens to mirror this stuff going on with the boy and his girlfriend.  And um everyone learns a lesson, and the ghost decides to accept death and move on to the light, and the boy decides to be nicer to his little sister.  Um.  Yeah.  

Seriously.  The only good thing about this book is that it is small enough that I was able to unobtrusively sit and read it in linguistics class, and ANYthing is better than paying attention to linguistics class.