A chilling ghost story, but more than that, a raw and honest look at bullying, at the pain and challenges of being the odd one out, an empathetic tale for everyone struggling to belong and be understood without losing sight of themselves.

Ugh.

It's basically a carbon copy of [b:Mine|52497379|Mine|Delilah S. Dawson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1612994985l/52497379._SY75_.jpg|77996988]: Young girl haunted by ghost tragically similar to her, who really isn't a "bad" ghost, she's just suffered a terrible tragedy through no fault of her own.

There is a point at which this book stops becoming a story and starts becoming an over-the-top screed on bullying. Parker's victimhood is ramped up to 11: Almost everyone hates her. Almost everyone picks on her. Just about every adult trots out some mindless platitude about standing up to bullies instead of doing anything substantial, and jumps on her to punish her the second she shows any mild dissatisfaction.

It's just too much to take seriously. This is not a concept that had to be so poorly executed: There are ways to criticize how adults handle bullying without making it into an endless "nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I guess I'll go eat worms" misery-fest. There are plenty of books that discuss the realities of persistent bullying and harassment and don't get this over the top.

The one point I will give this book is that it acknowledges that victims can become bullies, re: Cassandra also being a victim.

This was essentially the same as "Mine" in every meaningful respect, but one thing that I can't come down on as a flaw or a positive is the fact that Parker has absolutely zero accountability in how she's being treated by her bullies. At least with Lily I could argue some realism in that her parents refusing to believe her came from a place of her character flaws making her an unreliable historian; Parker's only identity in this book is as a tragic victim of literally everyone bullying her and/or not believing/caring that she's being bullied.

At the same time, "Mine" hand-waved all of Lily's legitimate character flaws at the end by arguing that they were strengths (they were not. Being so over-dramatic that even the people closest to you can't tell when you're being truthful or not is not a strength.), whereas Parker had nothing to hand-wave because she doesn't actually seem to have any recognizable flaws. Oh, sure, we get a mention at the beginning of the book that she doesn't really have friends because she talks too much (mostly about herself) and doesn't allow others to get a word in edgewise, but that isn't actually displayed in the book. She's too busy being a victim to have a well-developed personality because that's all the story allows her to be.

Look, you want to tell me many, or even most, of the girls in the camp disliked Parker based on rumor from a popular girl? Sure. But the boys, who she barely has any interaction with? And then she gets friction (unfairly! I cannot stress enough that these authority figures are unfairly biased towards her!) from so many different authority figures despite having done nothing at all to warrant it?

Come on. I don't believe it. You laid it on way too thick, and I say that as someone who was, in fact, a motor-mouth kid who said weird things and was consistently bullied in school.