Review Detail

I don’t usually read horror, mystery or ghost stories, but after reading Kim Harrington’s “The Dead and Buried,” I have decided it might be time to change that. The story follows Jade. A girl from a not so great neighborhood who finally gets the life she believes that she has always wanted. She moves into a nice house, in a great neighborhood with an even better school system. Jade is not your typical high school girl. She doesn’t care about appearances, could give a damn about popularity and chooses her friends based on personality and not status. This makes Jade stand out, but it’s not the reason everyone at school is staring at her. Jade is more than a new girl. She is infamous, because she lives in the house where Queen B Kayla Sloane died.

I may be wrong, but I personally think it is humanly impossible to read a mystery and not try to figure out the villain. The guessing game is my favorite part of this book. Everyone is a suspect. From the boy Jade likes, to her new best friend and her creepy next door neighbor. No one was safe from Kayla’s mean spirited actions and because of that, they are all suspects. Harrington did an absolutely fantastic job with red herrings, misdirection’s and misjudging of characters. Every five minutes I’d scream “THAT’S THE KILLER,” in my head and then change my mind five pages later. This book is also great with making you facepalm at your own thoughts. I quickly judged people and when the truth came out I would feel guilty. Guilty, because I misjudged a fictional character in a book!

“The Dead and Buried,” is definitely a page turner. Once it pulls you in, it will not let you go until you know the truth. I like that about a book. If it’s a mystery it better be mysterious. If it’s a horror it better at least freak me out. Kayla, the girl who died in Jade’s house, was a total mean girl and the idea that a mean girl may or may not be haunting Jade, is pretty freaky in my opinion. Regular ghosts yup freaky, but the ghost of a mean girl is terrifying!

This book is probably not the greatest thing ever written and Harrington is probably not going to become the next Edgar Allen Poe, but I believe that this book is smart. The author gives us an interesting cast of supporting characters. On the surface they seem like the normal cliché people you read in every young adult book, but they are not. They have family secrets and ambitions that you wouldn’t guess from just looking at them. Our misconceptions and prior knowledge of the popular girl, the nerd and the jock helps Harrington to muddle the investigation in our minds. We take what we think we know and we decide that makes them guilty or innocent and most of your guesses will be wrong.

This blog should probably be called “if there is no romance, I will not read it.” Honestly, I love romance and it is a good idea that not all the reviews and posts on this blog are written me! For me to talk about this book and not discuss the relationships would be completely out of character. There are two guys in this book that catch Jade’s attention or better yet Jade catches their attention. There is the artsy guy with the chip on his shoulder named Donavan and the nice, but is probably a player jock named Kane. Both these guys have very different personalities and yet we like them both. They both have a stake in the truth about Kayla and are both major players in the twists and turns of the story. Harrington doesn’t have Jade thinking about boys for every second of the day and I really liked that. As much as I love romance, sometimes heroines think about boys in life or death situations and I want to slap them. Jade knows how to multitask and boys while nice are not her priority. It is also not the priority of the book, but still I had very strong opinions about Jade’s love life.

This book is a quick and very entertaining read. The mystery and the investigation is interesting, but not overly taxing on the mind. You will not ask “what?!” in utter confused frustration. This is a young adult novel and it’s for entertainment and it succeeds at it’s goals. Lastly, Jade is an absolutely excellent heroine. She is smart, without being pretentious. She is friendly, but doesn’t need the approval of her peers. She is pretty and while she is not completely ignorant of it, she doesn’t sit around staring at mirrors or using her looks against others. I really liked her and I think if you give this book a chance, you will to.