Ashes to Ashes by Melissa Walker (review)

Callie has always dulled her pain over losing her mother with daredevil stunts, and after her dad gives her a fast BMW, she’s simultaneously testing its limits and answering her cell phone when suddenly she’s broadsided and pulled into another dimension. She’s greeted by a set of glowing teenagers and informed that the most handsome one, Thatcher, is to be her guide through a way station on the road to the afterlife, an intermediary place from which she can help the living gain peace with her death. Thatcher is cautious and uptight, though, and Callie comes to prefer the company of a group of wild teen ghosts who have a different idea of the purposes and potentials of haunting, and who are using her mysteriously strong energy to possess humans. Callie may struggle to understand the reasons behind Thatcher’s rules, but readers will know immediately that she is making all the wrong choices with her afterlife, and this is what drives the suspense here: will her reckless decisions and misplaced trust lead her to a fate worse than—or at least subsequent to—death? A gentle didacticism aimed squarely at risky teen behavior pervades the story as Cassie learns to appreciate her father’s style of care, and her glaringly bad judgment will have readers shaking their heads; the lure of an after-death romance on top of the tried-and-true premise of a teen’s imagining what will happen to friends and family after her death, though, will keep readers enthralled. Walker has chosen a perfect setting in Charleston, SC, where ghosts are a matter of course and steamy summers heighten the gothic atmospherics of teens courting danger. The ending is a bit of a tease—sequel, or just a wink to resist closure? Either way, readers will be intrigued by this entry in the paranormal romance genre.