This book was slow-moving to me. I kept waiting for something to happen, and I guess something did, but for some reason I didn't really feel it happening. Secrets about the protagonist's life are revealed, but it feels like that is something that happens to him, and I wanted him to discover something--to encounter something big when he secretly visits the school at night. Don't take this as a criticism of the book so much, but more of my personal hang-up. I can see that this is a book of high quality, I just didn't enjoy it that much for some reason.

Briefly, Emil's mother has died of cancer and his older brother has gone missing. His dad is of little help. He feels lost. He discovers a key in his brother's room that will open every door at school. He takes to visiting there at night and exploring. He meets a girl working late at night in the art studio and his life begins to change. We see how a single relationship can mean everything when it comes to dealing with grief and loss, facing what's real, and moving on. ( )

Emil's life has been turned upside down in the last year. His mother has died of cancer and his brother, who he has always looked up to, has disappeared without a trace. Emil and his father don't communicate about anything important and rarely see each other due to his father's work schedule. The only friend he has is Soma, a rule-bending, line-crossing boy who is in the same grade as Emil.Nothing exciting happens to Emil. He is average in every way. His brother, Ethan, was the bright, shining star with all the friends, good grades, and a way with the ladies. Emil just lives in Ethan's shadow. He attends Caramoor Academy, a private school with a hefty tuition. Since everything has happened in his family, Emil's grades have started to slip and his father is riding him harder than ever to make the grade; especially since he is paying so much for him to go to school at Caramoor.Emil does have the key though -- the key to notoriety, the key to exploration, the key to discovery. One day before Ethan left home, Emil was digging around in his bedroom and found an actual key. When he asked Ethan what the key unlocked he received a surprising answer: the key was a master key to the entire Caramoor Academy campus. Every door in every building was available to the person who held the key. Emil asked if he could have it and unbelievably, Ethan said yes. Normally the key was passed from one student to another each year. No one except the key holder was supposed to know who had it. The goal of the year was to pull off a monumental prank.Emil's chance at greatness comes when his father has to go out of town for a long business trip and he has four days and nights home alone. He decides to use his time exploring Caramoor Academy. He sets up a makeshift bed in the attic of the main building and proceeds to unlock every door he can find. One evening during his exploration, Emil sees the art studio lit up and hears music blaring from the room. He finds a girl inside spinning a clay pot. He is shocked and doesn't give her his real name because he doesn't want to get caught, but he also wants to find out what she is doing there. After some conversation, he realizes she is the daughter of the art teacher at the Academy.Over the next several days Emil and Jade, the girl in the art studio, form a relationship that leads them to many discoveries about themselves, about the death of Emil's mother and Ethan's role in it, and the importance of friendship. Eireann Corrigan has written a complex novel with true-to-life young adult characters that grow throughout the course of the story. Definitely for older teens, this novel covers topics such as grief, loss, family, and discovery with compassion and humor. ( )

Emil feels invisible at school and at home. When he finds a master key to his private school, he sneaks in to explore, and finds a reason to become visible. ( )

On the one hand, I really really liked it. On the other, I was a little confused by the lack of plot. But maybe it's how the character's evolve over a two week period that's the real story here. Not exactly what Booklist said in their review, but I think that that makes the story all that much better.

When the book opens, Emil's brother has just left shortly after their mother dies of cancer. Dad is withdrawn and Emil, being a 16 year old boy, doesn't exactly know what to make of the situation. On one hand (fav. phrase of the day) Emil has idolized his brother for so long that he is devastated by his apparent escape. On the other hand, he has no clue who he is without his brother around. That's the heart of the story, figuring out who you are when the thing that defines you is gone.

There are many drug references, sexual situations/descriptions and some cursing, but in the context of the story everything fits. It's written somewhat in a stream of conscience style, which fits since Corrigan is a poet first. It reads like the movie "Juno" at times and it's very dense. There is no wasted space in the 300-odd pages. Chapters are short and quick.

I might give this to a reluctant reader who is older, 10th grade and up. It reminded me of Sara Zarr's Story of A Girl in terms of the story. ( )

Young Adult books don't get much better than this one.

"Ordinary Ghosts" deals with grief, but with enough humor to make it a very enjoyable read as well as a meaningful one. The characters leapt off the page right into my heart. I loved the complexity of Emil's dad, in particular--who starts out seeming like kind of a jerk because of how he's coping with his own grief in a very human, imperfect way. I'm not sure Emil's success with the first girl he's talked to since 8th grade is entirely believable (and it's possibly too racy for the youngest YA-level readers, by the way), but what the heck, it's fiction.

I have two complaints that knocked half a star off my rating: 1) overuse of the word "douche bag." In some places the narrative voice started to wear thin--less like authentic male teen terminology and more like a female author trying too hard. There's a fine line between making a young character's voice come alive and over-using stereotypical language. For the most part, Corrigan was right on the mark. Just, not always.

2) The timeline of the backstory was confusing, partly due to what has to have been an editorial error on the second page. The narrator refers to "last winter" even though the book is in present tense and takes place in January. "Last winter" implies that something big happened the previous winter, but the backstory begins with his mom getting sick in spring and dying in October. Throughout the whole book I kept paging back, trying to figure out whether the mom had been dead over a year or just a few months. Needless to say, this was distracting. So, if you haven't read the book yet, my conclusion was that his mom got cancer less than a year ago, died in October, his brother left a month later, and now it's January and he's describing how time has slowed to a crawl as our story begins.

Really, though, those are minor flaws in a book that had me pretty well riveted from the start of this great YA/crossover/adult novel to the last page. ( )