I was slightly worried I might not like it. I tried the Replacement by her, and dropped it. Luckily Paper Valentine is a whole lot better, even if it took me some time to get into the book.

I like the story, the romance was just fitting in right too. Still wondering why Lillian was haunting Hannah, and sometimes Lillian was quite annoying.

The mystery was quite nicely done, with enough suspension and even some hints. :)

3.5. The story is lovely, but the unresolved plot points and unsatisfying character development left me feeling a little underwhelmed. Still highly recommended for the unconventional love story, and for dealing with complex emotions in a real way.

Wonderful. The writing is beautiful, the themes emotionally resonant, the chills chilling, and the whole just wonderful.

I don't know what it is about Yovanoff's writing, but with finishing this second book, I'm a confirmed fan.

Maybe its how painfully earnest and real her characters are. Maybe its how she can take things like anorexia and murder and bullying and abuse and make them into everyday, lovely things when her characters get through them.

Maybe its because I love the way her dark, sad images reach down past the walls we make telling ourselves who we are into our little, frightened hearts.

"Someone has stolen the trees outside my room and replaced them with bones-- the kind that throw long shadows on the wall, reaching in through the butter-yellow curtains until morning."

Hannah lives in a town where a serial killer is loose. But death isn't completely unknown to her. She's lived with the ghost of her dead best friend for more than six months now, and only by luck and concentration has she kept people from assuming she's crazy.

But this serial killer is targeting girls too close to Hannah, and soon there will be other ghosts clamoring for her attention.

So yes, at the heart of this book is a mystery, but its not the serial killer one. What doesn't get said in blurbs (even mine) is that at the heart of the book is the mystery of how a girl stops pretending to be perfect and happy long enough to find someone who loves her brokenness.

And for Hannah, that person might be Finny-- the boy who used to take lunch money and pushed her face into ice crystals back in elementary school.

Maybe, when it comes down to it, that's what makes Yovanoff's books so compelling for me. There is no insta-attraction, no undying love, just two damaged souls finding a kind of peace.

The serial killer stuff is probably a bit disturbing for young readers not yet 5th grade.

This Book's Snack Rating: Dark-chocolate covered ginger for the bitter, shadowed flavor of the emotional struggles with the sharp bite of a murder mystery

It was a really good murder mystery with ghosts involved. The murdered return as ghost. Will Hannah figure out who the murderer is before he gets her?

**Few Curse words

It was so refreshing to read a book that was not a part of a series. I have accidentally started like five series so far this year, and all I wanted was to read a book that completes a story. I really enjoyed this book. It's a simple plot about a murderer and a teenage girl acting as detective, so to speak. The best park of the book was definitely the subplot of a teenage girl in mourning after the death of her best friend.

My YA paranormal lit philosophy: Vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters, and angels may come and go, but ghosts never get old (ba dum bum!).

And serial killers? When you think about it, serial killers and ghosts are a natural pairing. Serial killers make ghosts. Those ghosts need revenge, so they have to find some poor sensitive medium to push around and complete their business. That person becomes an ad hoc detective in order to solve those murders. It’s a premise with endless permutations, and I never get tired of it.

Here the ad hoc detective is Hannah, a teen haunted by the ghost of her best friend Lillian (who interestingly died not from being serial killed, but from an eating disorder gone noticed but unremarked upon). But when other girls start getting murdered – their bodies decorated with a flea-market’s-worth of tchotchkes and a valentine – Hannah has more than one ghost pushing her around. The police suspect the town bad boy, Finny Boone, but after Hannah is on the receiving end of his quiet kindness, she learns that Finny, like Lillian, like herself, has hidden depths. But is he still a killer?

I admire Yovanoff's ability to create a creepy, unsettling mood. She excels at integrating a subtle paranormal element with the everyday. Her settings are distinctive, somewhat otherworldly, and essential to the story. I liked how she ties together the suffocating heat striking Ludlow with the suffocation of suburban small town life, where everybody knows you but doesn't really know you. (She did that same sort of thing with the small town in The Replacement, too.) The birds dropping out of the sky add another layer of seemingly paranormal foreboding.

The friendship between Hannah and ghost Lillian emphasize the difference between reality and perception, too, without hammering it home too much. In its own way, Lillian's presence is also smothering for Hannah, because it keeps her from moving on. Their relationship is complex, particularly because Hannah’s memory of Lillian when she was alive conflict with how Lillian is now that she’s dead. Lillian, as a ghost, is unable to change. She’s stuck in the super-skeletal body she had when she died, and she’s a collection of her most negative, judgmental qualities. She’s also able to speak the truth about her anorexia in a way that she never could while alive, and Yovanoff sensitively portrays her anorexia and Hannah’s grief and guilt over Lillians’s death without allowing it to take over and make this a didactic Problem Novel.

“The idea that a person can be defined by anything so superficial is terrible. Like this is the one true heart of her, reduced to a bony apparition in her pajamas….The simple version isn’t even recognizable when you hold it up against a living, breathing human being. Her ghost will always be so much less of her than the girl I used to see every day.”

Their comfortable but creepy friendship (and its stagnation) anchor the rest of the relationships in the story because those relationships can change.

I liked that Yovanoff didn't offer an explanation for Hannah's ghost-seeing abilities. If it hadn't been for the other ghost stuff, I would have chalked Lillian up to a metaphor for having your worst self follow you around and remind you of your failures. Finny, as the romantic lead/potential killer, makes a nice contrast with everything that Lillian represents. He's a sign that Hannah has started to develop as her own person, out of Lillian's shadow, and that she's started seeing beyond the surface of people. The two of them bond over being misunderstood, pigeonholed; over not being allowed to be more than other people expect them to be. Hannah has several realistic moments where she realizes that who you are and who you pretend to be aren’t the same, and that pretending to be cool, disdainful, and untouchable can do a lot of harm.

“Because the fact is, the contest has always been invulnerability, and even when you win, you still lose.”

It’s also far, far better than the romances in Yovanoff’s other two books, neither of which developed slowly or organically enough to feel believable for me. This one is steamy and sweet.

The serial killer storyline worked for me, obviously, aside from the tell-all ending. Yovanoff’s endings always happen too fast and don't feel developed enough. – I’ve felt that with her last two books, too. It’s never good when the killer spends pages monologuing about his plans, though I do appreciate a good villain speech. Hannah's investigation and weird obsession with the dead girls are suspenseful (I loved the scene where she makes the Ouija board on her floor), though I think Yovanoff is better at evoking dread than paying off on it.

Spoiler

For example: the dead birds are a great mood piece but didn't go anywhere and ultimately distracted me from the story because I kept expecting it to have a more sinister explanation.

But there were enough red herrings to keep me guessing, and when all is finally revealed, it makes sense.

I think Paper Valentine is Yovanoff's strongest book to date. Some of that might be due to my personal interests. Again, serial killers, ghosts, etc. But I also think her writing and her storytelling structure have improved with each book. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

You Should Read This: If you like Yovanoff’s other two books. If you like cross-genre standalone titles. If you like slasher stories on Valentine's Day. If Ouija boards creep you out. If you like that Sixth Sense, "I see dead people" vibe. If you like strong sibling relationships (Hannah's relationship with her sister is one of the better sibling relationships I've seen).

Also Read: Other, by Karen Kincy. Anya’s Ghost, by Vera Brogosal. The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson.

Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.

A departure for Yovanoff, this novel centres around a serial killer in Hannah's town, who is killing young girls. Perpetually haunted by the ghost of her dead friend, Lillian, who has died of an eating disorder, together, they sort through the clues left behind the gruesome crime scenes. Creepy and clever, I highly recommend this mystery-ghost story-romance!

I've read some mixed reviews but I found this story really lovely, strange and compelling. Read it in hardcover, because that upcoming paperback cover I see on goodreads is nothing special, and this cover is gorgeous. Read the full review at Slatebreakers: http://slatebreakers.com/2013/03/11/review-paper-valentine-by-brenna-yovanoff/

A girl is haunted by the ghost of her best friend who died of anorexia, but also helped by her to find the serial killer who is murdering young girls in their town.