Tighter

I love a good ghost story. One of my favorites of all time is Heart-Shaped Box. Now that is one freaky book. I was a little skeptical about going into this with high expectations since it is YA and all; it turned out to be one of the darker types of YA books.

Jamie is a very disturbed 17 year-old with an awful pill addiction. After suffering a back injury she hasn’t been able to quite kick the habit. Her mother, concerned with her recent behavior and thinking she may be suffering from depression, helps set her up with a job as an au pair for an old friend on the island of Little Bly in New England. Jamie is skeptical about taking this job but thinks it may in fact be a good idea; that maybe by the time she got back, they’d be gone. They being the two ghosts that haunt her, her Uncle Jim and second cousin Hank… both individuals committed suicide. Jamie has seen them both ever since the night she personally contemplated suicide.

Upon arriving at Little Bly Jamie finds out that the child, Isa, her last au pair Jessie was killed in a plane crash when her boyfriend Peter was flying. Jamie’s unsettled to see how the town residents stare at her… because Jamie is the spitting image of Jessie. It doesn’t help matters when Jamie starts to see Peter and Jessie, ghosts, just like her Uncle Jim and Hank.

The book was certainly a tad unnerving, as can be expected with ghost stories. But the author… her writing style was crazy. Jamie would be in the middle of thinking something and right in the middle she would say something else and have seemingly zero awareness of what she just said For example:

“I knew I needed more socializing than just interacting with Connie and Isa and Milo; even a daily phone call with Mags would have helped, but the longer I stuck with just myself, the more messed up I might become rapping at the windows crying at the locks and it was beginning to bother me how much.”

Crying at the locks? What the hell are you talking about?! What’s going on?? Lol But the writing was great; I loved how it always kept me guessing. And guessing you do… right up until the very end; I gasped. It’s one of those books where when you finally realize what’s going on it makes you have to stop, think, and look back at all that’s happened… makes you rethink everything.

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Has some very interesting twist in it. ( )

I don't have much to say about this book. In a lot of ways, it was kind of terrible, but, in other ways, I found it rather entertaining and diversionary. It reminded me quite a bit of Christopher Pike novels I used to read in middle school...complete with terrible teenage stereotypes, cheesy dialogue, and just a touch of actual creepiness.

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When seventeen-year-old Jamie’s mom sends her to the tiny New England island Little Bly to work as a summer au pair for an old friend of hers, she’s not exactly thrilled, but she knows that she has to make a change. After a sports-related injury and a little heartbreak from an inappropriate relationship, Jamie has taken to self-medicating with pills she swiped from her parents’ medicine cabinet. A summer away might be the thing that pulls Jamie out of her funk.

Of course, nothing on the island is how Jamie thought it would be. In charge of lonely eleven-year-old Isa, Jamie soon finds that Skylark, the mansion she’s living in, is full of secrets. Isa’s older brother Milo shows up unannounced, and his constant taunting of Jamie works her last nerve. She also discovers that Isa’s au pair from the previous summer looked remarkably like her–and she died with her boyfriend in a terrible plane crash. As Jamie starts to investigate the deaths of the young couple, she also finds herself haunted by their presence.

Loosely based on Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw, Griffin’s gothic ghost story is full of twists, turns, and incredible plotting. Best read near the water (or a campfire, or at night), Tighter will keep readers guessing about what’s really happening right up to the end. This story is really, really good.

Griffin plays with the reader by creating an unreliable narrator in Jamie. She pops pills on a daily basis to help numb her pain and make her reality a little less real. Because the pills are kept in a plastic baggie hidden in her room, Jamie doesn’t know which ones are which most of the time, and it becomes a bit of a guessing game to see how each will effect her. This is, I think, intentional on the part of Griffin, who wants to keep the reader guessing about what Jamie does, sees, and says at all times. This uncertainty and haziness about the events at Skylark and on Little Bly help propel the story forward and make for an absolutely riveting read.

It helps, of course, that Griffin is a really good writer. Her prose is tight (pun not intended, I swear); her characterization strong. Jamie might not always be very likable, but she is well-drawn. The surrounding characters–from the cantankerous housekeeper with a lisp to sad little Isa to her entitled teenage brother Milo–are fully-developed and compelling. Even minor characters, like the local teens that Jamie befriends, seem realistic and serve their purpose well.

Because of Griffin’s skilled writing and excellent pacing, readers aren’t going to want to put this one down. I read it in two chunks and loved every minute of it. The twists and turns are fresh, original, and thought-provoking. Even savvy, jaded readers who think they have it all figured out will be surprised by what’s in store for them in this excellent novel.

Highly recommended. One of the best books I’ve read this year.

Tighter by Adele Griffin. Knopf Books for Young Readers: 2011. Library copy. ( )

I have never read The Turn of the Screw but I assure you that if it's half as creepy as Tighter, I'll be saving it for another day. Cause wow. The lights were left on after reading this guy.

Griffin has written a tight, compact story that is filled with twists, turns and bumps-in-the-night. The reveal at the end took me by surprise, which was excellent and even MORE creepy.

This is one of those that you read aloud at the campfire or on Halloween. Well done, all around.

But seriously. Creepy. ( )