This book gets better as it goes, and by the end, I thought the author was really creating some nice moments. The writing is nice and occasionally quite lyrical, and I like the character dynamics in Jenny's household, which I felt was really where this book was strongest. The chemistry between the two ghosts did not immediately ring true to me, so some of the events at the beginning of the book seemed a little jarring and forced. Overall, though, an interesting book that had a strong impact on me in the end. I'm glad I kept reading. ( )

I've been eyeing this book since it came out 4 years ago, but I'm not a big fan of ghost stories (read: I'm a big wimp when it comes to scary stuff with no explanations). I put off reading it. Happily for me, this book is not scary. At all. There are some suspenseful moments, but they have nothing to do with ghosts so much as crazy parenting. But I'll get to that in a minute.

Basically, James, who used to haunt the park, found an empty body. The soul had walked off when the body OD-ed, so James decided to hop in. Because he's still a ghost, he can see Helen. They've both been alone for decades and relish in each other's company. They fall in love. Unfortunately, all of these inconvenient physical urges come with James' borrowed body. He wants to satisfy them with Helen, but to do that she also needs a body. They find her an empty body at, where else, the mall. Now James, in Billy's body, and Helen, in Jenny's body, are free to go at it like rabbits.

There are of course, complications such as when Billy's brother, who is raising Billy while their mom is in a coma and their dad is in jail, catches James and Helen (Billy and Jenny?) in the act. Or when Jenny's mom, who is ruled by her EXTREMELY religious husband, finds bloody panties when it's not Jenny (Helen?)'s time of the month and assumes, correctly, that someone has popped Jenny's cherry. Or when Helen starts to get nauseous every time she smells food after having lots of condoms-weren't-invented-before-I-died sex. But these are small roadblocks in Helen and James' love story.

This is paranormal romance at its best. Everyday concerns are left by the wayside as the extraordinary circumstances that make this love story work take precedence. As long as that's what you're looking for, you'll love this. But if you want a good almost Halloween ghost story, look elsewhere.

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb, is another novel about a paranormal romance. But the relationship makes more sense and is more mature than many of the relationships in this genre. But perhaps this is because the relationship is between two adults who have been around for many years, in ghost form. The novel focuses on Helen, a ghost who is 27 and has been dead for 130 years, who first meets James when she is haunting a teacher and notices that a teenage boy is staring at her. The teenage boy turns out to be James, a ghost who is really 29 and has been dead for 83 years, who is possessing the body which has been left vacant by its spirit. In order to be with James, Helen posses the body of teenage girl whose spirit has wandered off. Helen and James fall in love and together they work through the difficulties they face being two teenagers with two types of very extreme family backgrounds. They also deal with the traumatic events surrounding their deaths when James is accepted into heaven, Helen struggles with her personal hell, not sure if God will ever be able to accept her. This is a well-written, thought provoking novel, while also being very entertaining and unique. It manages to cover the oppression that teenagers can face from their parents, the question of what happens to us after we are dead, and the nature of true love.

Loved this book. The premise is so mind blowing and the characters are wonderful. It would be the perfect book: food for thought, inspiring, romantic, sexy, superbly written. The only complaint is even though it was a nice ending, the last 10 pages are a bit of a disappointment, a little corny. But again is a rather small detail. The book is wonderful. ( )

Helen is Light - a spirit who cannot find peace and, in a desperate attempt to stay far away from her ‘hell’ -chilled water, churning mud, the sensation of choking, drowning - she attaches herself to a series of human hosts, hovering around them unseen and unheard. That is, until one day, someone does see her and changes her life (if it’d be called as such) entirely.

What took my breath away was Laura Whitcomb’s intricate storytelling, as it left my heart aching, brought tears to my eyes, and made me love Helen and her consort, James. I loved it so much, that I wished for it to never end - but, alas, it did, as all books must. Although, the ending was perfect - I feel that there is no need (or rather, no point) in a sequel, as it ended so perfectly.

Now for the recommendation? Took care of that already (sorta)! One of my friends noticed I was reading it one day, and when I had put it down to go and fetch something to eat, she sprung on it, intrigued by the cover. She read the back and the first couple of pages before I returned and caught my wrist, holding the book up to my attention. “You’re letting me borrow this, right? After you’re done? Because it sounds amazing!” That same night, I went over to her mother’s house and she saw the book and begged me to let her borrow it as well.

It’s that amazing. So, yes, I recommend this book to any and all who want to read one of the best romances of all time.

I daresay that Helen’s and James’ love for each other blows a certain vampire couple out of the water! ( )

This is a well written love story between teenagers, but it is also a ghost story. A ghost girl who likes her host to be into poetry, so her latest host was an enlglish teacher. She can not been seen or heard, but there is a teenage boy who can see her. She finds out later he is actually a ghost, that took over the boy's body because its spirt left it. She finds a teenage girl and takes over hers. It is a very well written book. The ending was pretty good. I've read this book so many times and it is still really good. i give it a 9.7 out of 10. ( )

This is a slender story of two ghosts who fall in love, and try to find a way to stay together using bodies that have been abandoned by their souls. But those bodies have troubles of their own that must be unlocked before the ghosts of their new families can find peace. I'd give this to someone who enjoys an atmospheric story, with lots of references to poets and writers for the past. ( )

A beautiful and bittersweet love story, made me cry and my heart ache. Highly recommended. ( )

first line: "Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you're dead."

At first this novel struck me as a little too "writerly"...but somewhere along the line I became really invested in the story and devoured the book. It has an interesting take on ghosts: for example, ghosts can see and hear the living but remain oblivious to each other; only when a ghost is inhabiting the body of a person -- someone whose own soul has gone a-roving -- does s/he become cognizant of other ghosts. While the book deals much with the relationship between two such body-snatching spirits, the lives of their hosts factor largely into the storyline as well. I think the interplay of the ghost selves and human selves really makes the novel come together as a whole. ( )

I love this book. It's an unusual concept, but the characters make it believable. An unconvential love story, with poetry tied in along with heartbreaking family life. ( )

Richie's Picks: A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT by Laura Whitcomb, Houghton Mifflin/Graphia, September 2005, ISBN: 0-618-52552-X

"The pain, once I was dead, was very memorable. I was deep inside the cold, smothering belly of a grave when my first haunting began. I heard her voice in the darkness reading Keats, 'Ode to a Nightingale.' Icy water was burning down my throat, splintering my ribs, and my ears were filled with a sound like a demon howling, but I could hear her voice and reached for her. One desperate hand burst from the flood and caught the hem of her gown. I dragged myself, hand over hand, out of the earth and quaked at her feet, clutching her skirts, weeping muddy tears. All I knew was that I had been tortured in the blackness, and then I had escaped. Perhaps I hadn't reached the brightness of heaven, but at least I was here, in her lamplight, safe."

It was more than 150 years ago when the dead woman's tortured spirit became a "prisoner on leave from the dungeon." Helen can not be seen, nor heard, nor felt, although her emotions can occasionally send "a ripple into the tangible world." During those years, Helen has cleaved to a series of unwitting hosts, learned through trial and error the rules by which she must abide in order to prevent a return to her hell, and has periodically chosen another acceptable and convenient person to haunt (preferably one with some tie to literature, which she so loves) for when her current host grows old and dies.

The latest of Helen's hosts is an English teacher, Mr. Brown, and it is in his classroom that it happens:

"Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you're dead. I was with my teacher, Mr. Brown. As usual, we were in our classroom, that safe and wooden-walled box--the windows opening onto the grassy field to the west, the fading flag standing in the chalk dust corner, the television mounted above the bulletin board like a sleeping eye, and Mr. Brown's princely table keeping watch over a regiment of student desks. At that moment I was scribbling invisible comments in the margins of a paper left in Mr. Brown's tray, though my words were never read by the students. Sometimes Mr. Brown quoted me, all the same, while writing his own comments. Perhaps I couldn't tickle the inside of his ear, but I could reach the mysterious curves of his mind.
"Although I could not feel paper between my fingers, smell ink, or taste the tip of a pencil, I could see and hear the world with all the clarity of the Living. They, on the other hand, did not see me as a shadow or a floating vapor. To the Quick, I was empty air. "Or so I thought. As an apathetic girl read aloud from Nicholas Nickleby, as Mr. Brown began to daydream about how he had kept his wife awake the night before, as my spectral pen hovered over a misspelled word, I felt someone watching me. Not even my beloved Mr. Brown could see me with his eyes. I had been dead so long, hovering at the side of my hosts, seeing and hearing the world but never being heard by anyone and never, in all these long years, never being seen by human eyes. I held stone still while the room folded in around me like a closing hand. When I looked up, it was not in fear but in wonder. My vision telescoped so that there was only a small hole in the darkness to see through. And that's where I found it, the face that was turned up to me.
"Like a child playing at hide and seek, I did not move, in case I had been mistaken about being spotted. And childishly I felt both the desire to stay hidden and a thrill of anticipation about being caught. For this face, turned squarely to me, had eyes set directly on mind."

So begins the teenage love story of the year, and a supernatural one at that.

The young man who can see and hear Helen is Billy Blake, a human whose body has been taken over by a ghost named James at the moment its drug-addled teen owner checked out.

The two main difficulties facing Helen and James are:

Can Helen get a body of her own?

What happens when you suddenly become a troubled teenager but are not familiar with those thousands of details about the life you've supposedly been living.

Here this scenario takes on a whole different dimension from THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER.

Alternating between sensual, gritty, dark, delightful, and frightening; between atmospheric fantasy and down-and dirty contemporary YA realism, A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT is absolutely awash in literary quality and an award winner waiting to happen.

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com ( )

Hate to say it (because I'm a Twilight fan), but this is way better than Twilight. Still deals with an impossible love affair, but it is just so much better written. Two souls (from past generations) inhabit the bodies of modern day teens--they have to deal with typical teen angst, abusive homes, and not to mention, their own memories from former adult lives. Very original, intense, and romantic. The ending won't let you down either. ( )

A compelling love story with an unusual twist. ( )

Looking at romance in a new way is always a favorite of mine. I loved the authors sympathy towards her characters and her way of dealing with ghosts in a new light. I also enjoyed how she made something that is "bone-chilling" to even think about, sweet and almost not creepy.
I had a hard time with the ending. It seemed not so thought out as I would have liked. But then again, it was a difficult thing to finish and/or explain.
I have a hard time with a bit of the circumstances the characters were in (trying not to give anything away). It's a subject that bothers me and to have it left kind of open and possible for young readers, bothered me.
Other than that, a fun read. ( )

Helen died 130 years ago as a young woman. Unable to enter heaven because of a sense of guilt she carried at death, she has been silent and invisible but conscious and sociable across the generations. Her spirit has been sustained by its attachment to one living human host after another, including a poet and, most recently, a high-school English teacher. While she sits through his class one day, she becomes aware of James and he–unlike the mortals all around them–is aware of her as well. James, who also died years earlier, inhabits the body of a contemporary teen, Billy. James and Helen fall in love, he shows her how to inhabit the body of a person whose spirit has died but who still lives and breathes, and the two begin to unfold the mysteries of their own pasts and those of their adolescent hosts. Jenny, whose body Helen now uses, is the only child of strict religious parents who controlled her beyond what her spirit could endure. Billy's spirit left his body after a string of tragedies resulting from drug abuse and domestic violence. James and Helen court in both modern and old-fashioned ways. In the subgenre of dead-narrator tales, this book shows the engaging possibilities of immortality–complete with a twist at the end that wholly satisfies. ( )

I have never read a book like this before. What a wonderful read! Fear, sorrow and guilt hold back our spirits. We know this, and love, devotion and patience restore us. These things and more are given life in this story. And then finally, after life...peace. Extraordinary. ( )

This incredible book is poetically lyrical and heartwarmingly poignant. It is such a great book that I struggle to write a review that would do it justice.

Helen is a light, a spirit that has roamed the earth for 130 years latching herself to people who cannot see her while she vicariously watches their everyday joys and struggles.

Her most recent host is a high school literature teacher. While observing his class she discovers one of the pupils can "see" her.

Together the spirits search to uncover the bonds that hold them to earth and the sins they deem unforgivable that must be healed to set them free.

This is a story of compassion, of struggle, of redemption, of chains that hold and love that frees.

Five Stars! ( )

This one was a whopper of a tale - or rather more like a Whopper Combo Meal with the burger, fries and a drink - it has it all.

How I came across this book:
It totally blindsided me from the beginning with its bizarre originality - but it was an originality that I didn't notice until I started listening to it. It wasn't the blurb on the back cover that drew me in. When my library received this book a few weeks back I only gave it a cursory glance as I stuck it on the shelf. But when I ran across this authors new book (out last month) The Fetch, in a fleeting glance as a young girl was checking it out from the hold shelf, I did some research, looked the author up and discovered the connection between the two titles, seeing our Library system had an audiobook copy of Certain Slant of Light, being hungry for some audio titles, I requested it... the rest is blissful bookish history.

Why I loved this book:
I mentioned that I likened this book to the Whopper Combo Meal because it has it all, so allow me to elaborate!
This book has:
Love under unlikely/impossible circumstances. A spirit/soul/ghost (what have you) is seen by a living boy, they fall in love - which when stated succinctly, sounds corny to me personally, but there are quite a few other circumstances which actually make that situation rather intriguing.
Sex. It is quite innocent compared to other books, but present all the same, so beware!
Interesting/bizarre worldview. Suffice it to say that there is an angle presented in the main plotline where we get to see the result of a dispassionate/hypocritical devotion to "God", one completely guided and directed by rules and traditions rather than love, service, and passion.
Love/appreciation for books. I'm a sucker for the inclusion of a love for books in a plotline (Shadow in the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron, People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, etc...)

In an effort to remain objective:
I recognize that I might be a bit "over the top" in my appreciation of the book, so I read others' reviews of this book to gain some perspective and found that not everyone liked the things that I did about the story, so allow me to share some of what I found.
I was disapointed by the ending, it was a bit two pronged.
Story about ghosts in love. The idea for this book was very different and kept mu interest. It wasn't very strong and could have been written to be more appealing, but it was enjoyable.
The story is a bit disjointed in some parts
Other bloggers reviews: 1 2 3 4

The end. ( )

The plot of this book is incredible, but it fails to elaborate on key points. I had higher expectation when I bought this book. The plot about the sprite is what led to read this book in the first place. It wasn’t bad but nor was it great. Still enjoyed it, some things were a bit explicit. A fast read. ( )

Cooper, I. (Nov 15, 2005). Whitcomb, Laura. A Certain Slant of Light. Booklist, 102, 6. p.57(2).

Parravano, M V (Nov-Dec 2005). Laura Whitcomb: A Certain Slant of Light. The Horn Book Magazine, 81, 6. p.728(1).

I loved this YA novel. It's told from the POV of one of the Light, or a ghost, who meets another one of her kind who is possessing a human body. I don't want to give away more of the plot, because it's so unique and surprising. The plot is original, but what really caught me was the poetic simplicity of Whitcomb's prose. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for more by this author! ( )

I really enjoyed this book. I don't usually read a lot of YA stuff but the first sentence sucked me in and I wanted to know what happened to these characters. ( )

I have started on reading this book so many times, it got to the point where I had to just bite my tongue and do it. You know what, I did and I enjoyed it. It was very poetic and you spent a few chapters dozily imagining life as a ghost. I was disapointed by the ending, it was a bit two pronged. ( )

Probable Spoilers (but I tried not to give it all away!)

A rather magical love story about two ghosts - Helen and James - who find themselves inhabiting the bodies of contemporary teenagers from totally different sides of the tracks, as it were. James becomes Billy, a misfit druggie from a fantastically broken home who overdoses, allowing James' spirit to enter his body. Helen becomes Jenny, a nearly invisible damaged girl who's basically been brainwashed out of existence by her born-again Christian parents.

This book was like three distinct books & I felt very differently about each of them. Book 1 consists of the time when Helen is simply a ghost and James has come to inhabit Billy's body. This part of the book was wonderful and unique and very romantic - its killing me to even say that word because I am such a cynic, but there it is. Both James and Helen are of a different era, so their manners and morals are very different. But they are instantly drawn to each other because they are the only two ghosts who can see each other. This section of the book focuses a lot on James' attempts to blend in as Billy & Billy's wreck of a life. The writing was actually fairly good & had a very dreamy, ethereal quality, at least initially. I loved this section of the book.

Book 2 begins when Helen begins to inhabit Jenny's body. This comes about because James and Helen basically cannot stand to be physically apart. This part of the book was much more your standard teen novel with perhaps slightly more mature relationship stuff - still not graphic, IMO - since both James and Helen were in their late twenties when they died, they only look like teenagers. There is also a shift in focus from Billy's life to Jenny's life, which is as messed up as Billy's but in a totally different way. Lots of fundamentalist Protestant stuff in this section, all from a negative perspective. I didn't have a problem with this section, it just seemed so much more mundane. Typical teenage rebellion, star-crossed relationship between the bad boy and the good girl, and a bit of sex. Much of what was interesting about Helen and James was gone.

Book Three comes near the end & cannot really be described without an unacceptable number of spoilers. Here is where the mystery elements really start to come into play - James and Helen cannot clearly remember their pasts or why they are unable to pass along. They also don't really know anything about what happened in Billy and Jenny's lives before they became them. All these mysteries get explored - some are pretty obvious to see coming, others are done with a little more creativity.

All in all, I am of two minds about this book. Part of me just wants to go with the great, dreamy feeling the first part of the book gave me; the other part wants to criticize this book for some its trite and obvious ploys. That probably means it gets a three. Maybe three and a half. Still, I would recommend it to anyone who wants a good "hot water bottle book." (I stole that term from another LT user, cannot remember who, or I would give credit because its quite apt!) ( )

Helen has spent the last 130 years in a form she describes as Light, cleaving to a host to prevent her from plunging into the depths of Hell. Then she realizes that a human being can actually see her. Drawn to this young man, Helen experiences feelings she never knew in her life and eventually learns to inhabit the body of a young girl who is living her own Hell on earth. The writing has an ethereal feeling to it which adds to the mood of the novel. Engrossing. ( )