The Catastrophic History of You and Me

Gr 9 Up—Brie is a girl with a broken heart—literally. After her boyfriend, Jacob, tells her he doesn't love her, she dies of a broken heart. In fact, at the autopsy, they find that her heart is in two pieces. How do we know this? Because Brie, now in that place between Earth and Heaven, tells us so. Waiting at "A Little Slice of Heaven," an afterlife pizza joint, she meets Patrick, a dead boy who shows her the ropes of being dead. As she passes through the five stages of grief, she gets revenge on Jacob and her good friend, Sadie; meets the irritating Larkin who encourages Brie's dark side; and falls in afterlife love with Patrick. While she's not a very likeable character for most of the story, she's redeemed in the end. Suzy Jackson provides discernible voice, emotion, and pace to the characters and plot in Jess Rothenberg's novel (Dial, 2012). For paranormal romance fans.—Ann Brownson, Ballenger Teachers Center, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston