Paper Valentine, by Brenna Yovanoff
My YA paranormal lit philosophy: Vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters, and angels may come and go, but ghosts never get old (ba dum bum!).
And serial killers? When you think about it, serial killers and ghosts are a natural pairing. Serial killers make ghosts. Those ghosts need revenge, so they have to find some poor sensitive medium to push around and complete their business. That person becomes an ad hoc detective in order to solve those murders. It’s a premise with endless permutations, and I never get tired of it.
Here the ad hoc detective is Hannah, a teen haunted by the ghost of her best friend Lillian (who interestingly died not from being serial killed, but from an eating disorder gone noticed but unremarked upon). But when other girls start getting murdered - their bodies decorated with a flea-market’s-worth of tchotchkes and a valentine - Hannah has more than one ghost pushing her around. The police suspect the town bad boy, Finny Boone, but after Hannah is on the receiving end of his quiet kindness, she learns that Finny, like Lillian, like herself, has hidden depths. But is he still a killer?
Minor spoilers ahead:
I admire Yovanoff's ability to create a creepy, unsettling mood. She excels at integrating a subtle paranormal element with the everyday. Her settings are distinctive, somewhat otherworldly, and essential to the story. I liked how she ties together the suffocating heat striking Ludlow with the suffocation of suburban small town life, where everybody knows you but doesn't really know you. (She did that same sort of thing with the small town in The Replacement, too.) The birds dropping out of the sky add another layer of seemingly paranormal foreboding.
The friendship between Hannah and ghost Lillian emphasize the difference between reality and perception, too, without hammering it home too much. In its own way, Lillian's presence is also smothering for Hannah, because it keeps her from moving on. Their relationship is complex, particularly because Hannah’s memory of Lillian when she was alive conflict with how Lillian is now that she’s dead. Lillian, as a ghost, is unable to change. She’s stuck in the super-skeletal body she had when she died, and she’s a collection of her most negative, judgmental qualities. She’s also able to speak the truth about her anorexia in a way that she never could while alive, and Yovanoff sensitively portrays her anorexia and Hannah’s grief and guilt over Lillians’s death without allowing it to take over and make this a didactic Problem Novel.
“The idea that a person can be defined by anything so superficial is terrible. Like this is the one true heart of her, reduced to a bony apparition in her pajamas….The simple version isn’t even recognizable when you hold it up against a living, breathing human being. Her ghost will always be so much less of her than the girl I used to see every day.”
Their comfortable but creepy friendship (and its stagnation) anchor the rest of the relationships in the story because those relationships can change.
I liked that Yovanoff didn't offer an explanation for Hannah's ghost-seeing abilities. If it hadn't been for the other ghost stuff, I would have chalked Lillian up to a metaphor for having your worst self follow you around and remind you of your failures. Finny, as the romantic lead/potential killer, makes a nice contrast with everything that Lillian represents. He's a sign that Hannah has started to develop as her own person, out of Lillian's shadow, and that she's started seeing beyond the surface of people. The two of them bond over being misunderstood, pigeonholed; over not being allowed to be more than other people expect them to be. Hannah has several realistic moments where she realizes that who you are and who you pretend to be aren’t the same, and that pretending to be cool, disdainful, and untouchable can do a lot of harm.
“Because the fact is, the contest has always been invulnerability, and even when you win, you still lose.”
It’s also far, far better than the romances in Yovanoff’s other two books, neither of which developed slowly or organically enough to feel believable for me. This one is steamy and sweet.
The serial killer storyline worked for me, obviously, aside from the tell-all ending. Yovanoff’s endings always happen too fast and don't feel developed enough. - I’ve felt that with her last two books, too. It’s never good when the killer spends pages monologuing about his plans, though I do appreciate a good villain speech. Hannah's investigation and weird obsession with the dead girls are suspenseful (I loved the scene where she makes the Ouija board on her floor), though I think Yovanoff is better at evoking dread than paying off on it. For example: the dead birds are a great mood piece but didn't go anywhere and ultimately distracted me from the story because I kept expecting it to have a more sinister explanation. But there were enough red herrings to keep me guessing, and when all is finally revealed, it makes sense.
I think Paper Valentine is Yovanoff's strongest book to date. Some of that might be due to my personal interests. Again, serial killers, ghosts, etc. But I also think her writing and her storytelling structure have improved with each book. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
You Should Read This: If you like Yovanoff’s other two books. If you like cross-genre standalone titles. If you like slasher stories on Valentine's Day. If Ouija boards creep you out. If you like that Sixth Sense, "I see dead people" vibe. If you like strong sibling relationships (Hannah's relationship with her sister is one of the better sibling relationships I've seen).
Also Read: Other, by Karen Kincy. Anya’s Ghost, by Vera Brogosal. The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson.
Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.