O’Nan takes a typical small-town tragedy-a carload of teenagers crashes into a tree, killing three, leaving one permanently brain-damaged and one survivor obsessed with why he didn’t die-and transforms it into a haunting ghost story. Like the other two books I have read by this author, the time in which the story takes place is finite and very short, just the evening before and the day of the anniversary of the accident, which also happens to be Halloween. The three dead kids are forced as ghosts to hop from observing one person to the next, as the people whose lives were permanently disrupted by the tragedy think about them constantly and thus “call” them. The ghosts are helpless to do anything but watch as events unfold with a sense of inevitability, as their friend prepares to recreate that terrible night and the police officer who discovered them obsesses over an awful secret.

Two things prevented this book from getting more than an average rating from me. The first was that I found it to be a bit repetitive as the ghosts move from their friend Tim to the police officer, Brooks, to the mother of their damaged friend, Kyle (whom they refer to as Kyle’s mom). Since every moment of the night and day leading up to the anniversary is narrated, it feels like we’re wallowing in pain and maudlin tragedy—for me, it was a bit much. Also, I was disappointed and unsatisfied by the ending, which I won’t spoil here. But I felt like I needed something more to tie up the story for me.