Funeral Songs for Dying Girls
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
After inadvertently starting rumors of a haunted cemetery, a teen befriends a ghost in this brand-new young adult novel exploring grief and belonging by the critically acclaimed and bestselling author of The Marrow Thieves series.
Winifred has lived in the apartment above the cemetery office with her father, who works in the crematorium, all her life, close to her mother's grave. With her sixteenth birthday only days away, Winifred has settled into a lazy summer schedule, lugging her obese Chihuahua around the grounds in a squeaky red wagon to visit the neglected gravesides and nursing a serious crush on her best friend, Jack.
Her habit of wandering the graveyard at all hours has started a rumor that Winterson Cemetery might be haunted. It’s welcome news since the crematorium is on the verge of closure and her father’s job is being outsourced. Now that the ghost tours have started, Winifred just might be able to save her father’s job and the only home she’s ever known, not to mention being able to stay close to where her mother is buried. All she has to do is get help from her con-artist cousin to keep up the rouse and somehow manage to stop her father from believing his wife has returned from the grave. But when Phil, an actual ghost of a teen girl who lived and died in the ravine next to the cemetery, starts showing up, Winifred begins to question everything she believes about life, love and death. Especially love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Interweaving horror elements and wry humor, Dimaline (The Marrow Thieves), who is from the Georgian Bay Métis Community, crafts a macabre tale about a lonely girl who falls in love with a ghost. Sixteen-year-old Winifred Blight has lived on Toronto Winterson Cemetery's grounds with her crematory operator father, who is white, ever since her Métis mother's death during childbirth. Winifred is often bullied at school for her family's graveyard residence, resulting in few relationships beyond her father, whose worries surrounding the cemetery's imminent closure cause tension at home. When a passerby notices Winifred roaming the tombstones at night, they spread rumors about the cemetery being haunted, prompting a local ghost tour administrator to offer the family money in exchange for adding Winterson as a stop on the route. Winifred is happy her father agrees, but when she meets and falls for Phil, the ghost of a 15-year-old girl who died nearby, she fears the increased scrutiny will jeopardize their budding relationship. Contemplative prose excels in its portrayal of a reclusive protagonist longing for connection and overcoming grief while living in a neighborhood that shuns her for perceived shortcomings, presenting a textured narrative about loss and love. Ages 14–up.
