City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab

If you (or a child you know) are in the market for a wonderful weird middle-grade book then you should totally pick this one up! 

The plot doesn’t take off until part two but once it gets going you will become very wrapped up in the veil and the ghosts that lay beyond it. 

The characters are delightful! There is a functional family at the center: dad is a bumbling professor and mom is a free-spirited storyteller and Cass, our hero, is a curious brave girl whose life got tangled with death and can now see ghosts. One of the ghosts is her best friend Jacob. He is silly and sweet and shrouded in mystery. Later in the book, we meet Lara, a girl who is very no-nonsense who grudgingly takes Cass under her wing. 

The setting. Oh my gosh. Disclaimer: I have been to Edinburgh and I loved it. Only for like four days though. But this book felt like I was walking the streets again. And Victoria Schwab really captures what it is like to be a child fascinated by a new city and the feeling I had upon exploration of Edinburgh. She brought me right back there. 

I really think this story could have worked as a YA if Schwab had wanted to make it creepier and darker. But even being middle grade this book is very tangled in death in a way that would have fascinated me as a younger person. I haven’t read much middle grade recently but this was a wonderful place to jump back into it.

I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads and finished it on September 9th, 2018.