Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I need to be very clear about this: I read it mainly because it is written by Seanan McGuire, not because I was particularly enthralled by the subject matter. I prepared myself for merely *liking* the book, not loving it.

At first, it just appeared to be a rather good character study of an already dead girl, dead back in '53, as she jaunted from time to time because that's what the dead does -- getting filled in on her after-death and the status of her urban legend ghosthood.

And then something happened. Maybe it's how Seanan approached the character, as a dozen snippets and somewhat contradictory stories, but she wrote one of the most complicated and delightfully rounded characters I've yet seen from her. Our dead heroine really came alive.

Death, tragedy, and psychopomps. It's a real roadtrip novel based in the real world and the roads of the dead, from Highway 1 to the Ocean Lady, crossroads guardians, deals with dead witches, and a ghost rider from a precursor of James Dean who eats souls to stay forever young, this entire novel rocked.

There are so many sides to it, but it's always close to the chest and raw and real.

I'm afraid I fell in love with it. It ranks up higher than Seanan's Incryptid series, easy. It probably outshines books 2 and 3 of Wayward children, too. It's hard to compare it to the whole of the Daye novels, but it is better than some of them. It's an entirely different beast from her Grant novels tho, so I won't even try to compare. :)

I honestly want more of this. Please, more Ghost Roads!



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