Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | SCD FICTION YOV 7 DISCS | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
The city of Ludlow is gripped by the hottest July on record. The asphalt is melting, the birds are dying, petty crime is on the rise, and someone in Hannah Wagnor s peaceful suburban community is killing girls.
For Hannah, the summer is a complicated one. Her best friend Lillian died six months ago, and Hannah just wants her life to go back to normal. But how can things be normal when Lillian s ghost is haunting her bedroom, pushing her to investigate the mysterious string of murders? Hannah s just trying to understand why her friend self-destructed, and where she fits now that Lillian isn t there to save her a place among the social elite. And she must stop thinking about Finny Boone, the big, enigmatic delinquent whose main hobbies seem to include petty larceny and surprising acts of kindness.
With the entire city in a panic, Hannah soon finds herself drawn into a world of ghost girls and horrifying secrets. She realizes that only by confronting the Valentine Killer will she be able move on with her life and it s up to her to put together the pieces before he strikes again.
Paper Valentine is ahauntingly poetic tale of love and death by the New York Times bestselling author of The Replacement and The Space Between ."
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-Hannah Wagnor is haunted by the ghost of her dead best friend, Lillian. As the summer temperatures heat up, so does Hannah's love life. Hannah starts dating local bad boy Finny Boone, but something feels off about him. When girls start showing up dead, Hannah worries that the murderer might be Finny or someone he knows. Using her Quality Photo job to sneak a peek at the crime scene photos her boss develops, she discovers that each picture features a girl who has been hit over the head holding a paper valentine in her hand and kids' toys spread all around the murder scene. Hannah realizes that the deaths are somehow linked to an older murder of a classmate. With the help of the murdered girls' ghosts, she and Lillian try to solve the case, but the killer is closing in and doesn't want to be discovered. Can Hannah figure out who the murderer is before she becomes another victim? Caitlin Prennace's narration of Yovanoff's tale (Razorbill, 2013) is engaging. Although the characters could have been better developed, their personalities are brought to life through the narrator's unique voices and intonations. The plot has a few holes in it and the murderer lacks motive, but the narrator's smooth, expressive transitions will easily draw in listeners. Fans of mysteries peppered with romance will enjoy this audiobook.-Kira Moody, Whitmore Public Library, Salt Lake City, UT (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In her chilling third novel, Yovanoff (The Space Between) combines supernatural horrors with others that are all too human. Hannah Wagnor is deeply depressed, unable to handle the recent death, by anorexia, of her best friend, Lillian. However, Lillian is still around: she's haunting Hannah on a daily basis-at once a consolation and a burden-still Hannah's friend, but making it impossible for Hannah to accept her death. It's one of the hottest summers on record, and everyone is on edge because of a recent murder in a town park. More murders follow, all girls, their bodies found surrounded by cheap toys and paper valentines, a creepy combination of innocence, tackiness, and gore. Pushed on by Lillian, Hannah becomes obsessed with the murders, while also falling deeper into her attraction to one of the local juvenile delinquents, the hulking, potentially dangerous Finny Boone. Against a grisly backdrop, Yovanoff gives keen insight into friendship, sisterhood, and the stresses involved in being a teenage girl, in a painful but satisfying story that shows off the author's gifts for writing dark contemporary fantasy. Ages 12-up. Agent: Sarah Davies, Greenhouse Literary Agency. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
From page one, the landscape of this novel is decidedly eerie. The city of Ludlow is experiencing a suffocating heat wave, there's a rash of dead birds, a young girl is found brutally murdered in a park, and there is Lillian, Hannah's best friend who died six months ago but now haunts Hannah's every move. The description of ghost Lillian, who died of anorexia, is vivid, disturbing, and even crude: "Her face is as sharp and hollowed-out as a moon crater"; "The outline of her hipbones looked like a basket with nothing in it." Sustaining this tone throughout, Yovanoff relates Hannah and Lillian's obsessive investigation (both in the real world and the supernatural realm) into the murders that soon pile up in their community. The serial-killer mystery unfolds steadily, then rapidly, and the climax is unexpected and thrilling. Meanwhile, Hannah begins a relationship with mysterious delinquent Finny Boone. As their romance blossoms, so, too, does Hannah's confidence, her spirit slowly strengthening until she's able to stand up for herself in multiple situations -- even to Lillian, who had been the dominant one in their friendship. This is taut sleuthing, a supernatural ghost story, and a coming-of-age novel; it's horrific and shrouded in death but also poetic and life-affirming. These remarkable juxtapositions will haunt readers long after they've put the book down. katrina hedeen (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Yovanoff (The Replacement, 2010, and The Space Between, 2011) returns with another tale barbed around the edges by the profane and the grotesque. It's been six months since Hannah's best friend, Lillian, died from an eating disorder, a fact Hannah can't forget because Lillian is haunting her, rather languorously, sighing over Hannah's clothing choices and criticizing her taste in boys. This edgy supernatural relationship intensifies with the arrival of the Valentine Killer, a child murderer who dresses up his or her victims with toys and paper valentines. Lillian is able to conjure the voice of one of the deceased, who supplies the girls with a clue, and soon the unlikely investigative duo is hunting down the criminal who may or may not be Finny, the hunky delinquent who's got Hannah feeling squishy. The killer-explains-all conclusion is pat, but everything else goes gangbusters, with Yovanoff's patent-pending blend of weak-kneed ennui and crackling nastiness turning pages faster than ever. Thrills, romance, gore what's not to like?--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2010 Booklist
