Under the Light by Laura Whitcomb (review)

In A Certain Slant of Light (BCCB 9/05), Helen, a restless spirit, temporarily inhabited the body of a teenaged girl, Jenny, to meet up with her true love. Now Jenny's back in her own body and facing the consequences of what Helen did—mouthing off to her mother's prayer group, and even going to bed with a boy (Billy, who was inhabited by Helen's true love, Jamie). She and Billy start shyly to put together the details of the period that neither of them remember and embark on a romance of their own; at the same time, Jenny's abusive fundamentalist father, who's left the family for another woman, begins to insist that Jenny come live with him. Through all this, Helen attempts to atone for her behavior by giving Jenny as much ghostly aid and comfort as she can muster to compensate for Jenny's parents' failure to support their own daughter. Though Jenny and Helen take turns narrating, it's Jenny's travails that are compelling here, as opposed to the ghostly love story of the previous title; her growing closeness with Billy is an oasis in a punishing life that will make readers indignant on her behalf. The ghost story is actually rather a distraction, requiring recent knowledge of the first title and often slowing the plot down to a crawl; Helen's attempts to help Jenny are nearly as self-serving as her possession of Jenny's body in the first place, so there's little sympathy for Helen to leaven the slow passages featuring her regret and her desire for the real afterlife. While readers will find this a bit of a letdown after the first book, they may still wish to see how things play out for the benighted characters.