Review of Walk Of The Spirits by Richie Tankersley Cusick

Format: eBook
Genres: paranormal, ghosts, mystery,
Pages: 336
Publisher: Puffin Books
Release Date: 17/04/2013
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When Miranda Barnes first sees the sleepy town of St. Yvette, Louisiana, with its moss-draped trees, above-ground cemeteries, and her grandfather’s creepy historic home, she realizes that life as she knew it is officially over. Almost immediately, there seems to be something cloying at her. Something lonely and sad and... very pressing. Even at school and in the group project she’s been thrown into, she can’t escape it. Whispers when she’s alone, shadows when no one is there to make them, and a distant pleading voice that wakes her from sleep. The other members in Miranda’s group project, especially handsome Etienne, can see that Miranda is in distress. She is beginning to understand that, like her grandfather before her, she has a special gift of communicating with spirits who still walk the town of St. Yvette. And no matter where she turns, Miranda feels bound by their whispered pleas for help... unless she can somehow find a way to bring them peace.

Slow, boring and cliched, Walk of the Spirits was not a book I would have expected from an author I consider a favourite. Miranda moves to a new town and for some reason, starts seeing ghosts. Not that she's ever done this before. She quickly makes friends with a group of cardboard characters and the scooby doo gang try and solve the ghostly mystery, while Miranda thinks a lot. We have pages and pages of her thoughts, most of which are repeated from previous pages. I have no idea how I finished reading this.

I think the main problem with this book might be it's length. There's not a whole lot of plot, so for the most part I felt like I was reading filler. The ghosts aspect was the most interesting and I really wanted to solve the mystery which just got more and more complicated as the book went on. Miranda is kind of useless and heavily relies on her friends to solve the mystery for her.

Miranda's thoughts are the most irritating parts of this book but I had to get used to them because they seemed to be all the book was about. She'd go off in these winding spiels, thinking about her Grandad or Etienne (the love interest) or the ghosts and this repeated a lot. Once was bad enough but reading similar thoughts over and over was just painful.

The characters don't bring much to the story, all of them are cliched. I liked Roo best as she was sarcastic cardboard, while Miranda was new girl cardboard. We also have love interest with a secret cardboard, jock cardboard and girl next door cardboard too. One character I was most intrigued about was Miranda's aunt, who is mentioned a lot but has about one scene, despite living in the same house.

Setting a story in a town that was once in the grip of the civil war should have been a great concept, but overall it was badly executed. I didn't find this story particularly memorable and I don't think I'll be picking up it's sequel, Shadow Mirror. If you're looking for a ghostly Twilight with very little romance though, you'll probably like this book.