This post is a day late, but this review has been a long time coming. I originally requested this book from LibraryThing's Member Giveaway in February of 2015! I had not known that it was the Kindle edition, meaning that the only way I would be able to read the book (at the time) was on Amazon's website, or on my phone's rather small screen, so it fell by the way side. So this last year with my parents giving me a tablet for Christmas I was able to start reading on a larger screen without sitting in front of my computer! I love it! I have the Amazon Fire HD 10 and I just love having it for reading and blogging while I travel, and as a larger screen for just browsing in general. #GlassesGirlProblems. Anyway, I have a bunch of reviews I have been backed up on and I'm finally down to just two books (I'll be posting the other review as I get to reading it).
This also goes into my mini resolution this year which is to read every book I own before I start buying new books. I know! It seems impossible, but I am avoiding LibraryThing and Goodreads giveaways and I am also in the process of trying to buy a car so I've gotten pretty good at not buying books or other splurge items. This is my long winded explanation for why I have been doing big posts of mini reviews.
So without further ado, I'd like to start my review by saying this book was hard to jump into! 6th Grade Supernatural: Abigail's Curse centers around Zander Casey, a 6th grade boy with a special ability. Zander is a Parallel. Zander can see ghosts. Now not all ghosts are bad according to Parallels. In fact most ghosts are rather pleasant and can be nice company sometimes. These ghosts are refereed to by Zander as "friendlies". Friendlies will strike up a conversation with you and maybe have a bit of fun but don't cause harm or trouble, unlike Nasties.
Nasties are ghost that are malicious in nature, they tug hair, throw trash, pull pranks and cause all other kinds of disturbances. They are just down right, well, nasty! As a Parallel it's Zander's job, along with his father who also has the gift, to track supernatural energy and banish Nasties from this world, a job that Zander holds with pride. But Zander's job is made increasingly hard with the arrival of Abigail Stone. On her first day of school the new girl is a bit of a snob, ignoring the pursuit of friendship from other classmates, and throwing dark glances at anyone who looks her way. To all the other students Abigail looks like trouble, but she's not the only one, for with her arrival Abigail brings a whole slew of Nasties. And with this Zander's trouble is just beginning.
I have to start by saying that no matter how much I enjoyed this book the first two chapters were terribly written! The first chapter was too long and the second too short. The story would have flowed better if they had rearranged the two of them so they were more equally decided. The world building was not done very well either and left you with many questions that weren't answered until the end of the second chapter. This was the main reason I procrastinated with starting this book. I would read the first chapter over and over and feel like I was simultaneously getting too much information and not enough.
You don't even know Zander's name or gender until the second chapter! There's only a few descriptions of characters, one of Abigail, described as having greasy black hair, very pale skin, green eyes, and a budding pimple, and the other is of Zander's father, a combination of a hipster and The Absent Minded Professor. But there is no mention of Zander's appearance nor any of his family members or fellow students. Understanding that this is an Advanced Reader's Copy I took this to mean that there would be more character description, and development when a completed version of the book was released, and I do genuinely still hope that. I really like the development of Abigail's character, and believe it was done very well. She's described as very pale with greasy, jet black hair and a budding pimple on her nose. To a kid she seems like someone you would want to avoid. But when it came to the introduction of other characters this book left something to be desired.
There's mention of Zander's dad, Robert, having "pants that stop before his ankles", glasses and messy hair. I pictured him as a Wes Anderson/Cornelius Robinson character, hipster genius, but the appearance of the rest of the characters were missing. One of the big things I have to have in a book is description. Description of characters, of creatures, of surroundings. I am a visual person and my biggest complaint about this book is that there is little description of what anyone or anything looks like. This is really unfortunate because this book could have had a really cool Ghostbusters, or even steampunk vibe but it was just lacking. That being said this book is under 100 pages. It's a quick read and you don't really notice a lot of things that, had it been a longer book, you would have noticed. The characters, have little development and the surroundings aren't described well, but these are all things that an adult reading it would notice, and are less likely to be noticed by a kid. The whole overall story was fun and engaging and a good introduction to a series that could be really good. It just felt like a ending draft, it's almost there but not quite perfect. For example after the finale fight scene was over there was a really quick wrap up and lesson where there could have been more, more to grab you and make it an engaging lead-in for the second book. I guess what I'm saying is I really wanted this book to succeed but it left me feeling underwhelmed.
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