Unfortunates by Lillian Graves

 Seventeen-year-old Vanessa is about to get a new life—whether she wants one or not. With a best friend keeping a crazy big secret from her and her parents rubbing their perfect high school love story in her rocky relationship's face, she doesn't have any more cares to give. So when Adam, a ghost who calls himself an Unfortunate, tells her she is his Match - the one who can help him earn his second chance at life by committing random acts of kindness – she nearly blows a fuse.

No, scratch that. It shot straight off. I mean, why help a ghost who may just be in her head? What was in it for her?

After the denial and resistance pass, Vanessa begins to realize not all of arrangement is against her favor. There is something rather cute about Adam and maybe, just maybe, if he is telling the truth and she brings him back to life, he could be her new date to prom.

But can her selfish ways live up to his expectations?

I was set to like the book because I did love the premise: Girl finds ghost of dead man following her because she is his only chance at getting his life back. So, to get things straight: Unfortunates are people who died before their time. If they find their Match – who happens to be alive – then that person can help them get a second chance at life and, yeah, supposedly the two are fated to fall in love.

First, the writing style was really hard to get through. The author changed thoughts and conversations so fast, I kept getting lost. Second, I really couldn’t stand the main character Nessa. I found her way too self-involved and not someone I could connect with. For a main character, there didn’t seem to be enough depth for her personality to even make sense. Third, there was a lot of political-hit-the-reader-over-the-head going on. Personally, I think the story premise could have stood on its own, but added to it was the rights/respect for the mentally disabled, issues with interracial relationships, and a lesbian relationship that bothered me because the character who was now ‘stuck’ with her unfortunate because she was informed by the girl they were fated to fall in love. Uh…She seemed quite happily in love with her boyfriend. But suddenly because an unfortunate tells her she’s it for her, then suddenly she’s a lesbian? That soured things fast for me (and that was toward the beginning of the book). And fourth…the supernatural things suddenly Nessa and others could undertake were completely unbelievable. In any book, the subject matter needs to be believable within the universe of the book. This was not.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble