I Heart You, You Haunt Me -- Lisa Schroeder

After the sudden death of Jackson, the boy she thought she'd spend the rest of her life with, Ava realizes that he isn't really gone.  He's with her.  Not just in her heart or in her memory or some other platitude-sounding version of "with her".  No, he's actually there.  In her house:

As I stand in the bathroom,
carefully lining my eyelids
bronze,
I feel a splash
of cool air.

I shiver.

I feel something.
Something behind me.
Something familiar.
Hauntingly familiar.

I glance behind me,
but I don't see
anything.
Or anyone.

And then,
when I look in the mirror
again,
I see,
for just a split second,
not just me,
but someone else.

Jackson.

What follows is kind of the YA verse novel version of Truly, Madly, Deeply, minus Alan Rickman's amazingly obnoxious ghost buddies.  Ava and Jackson both need to let go -- Ava of Jacksonand of her own guilt about his death, and Jackson, more simply, of Ava. 

Ava needs to find a way to embrace life again.  But how is that possible when her dead boyfriend comes to her every night in her dreams?

For the most part, I enjoyed I Heart You.  It didn't hold any surprises, and it occasionally felt VERY Stereotypical Teenage Girl Poet*, but the lack of surprises didn't particularly bother me and the STGP aspect makes sense as the narrator is, um, a teenage girl.

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*Remember the Veronica Mars episode where she infiltrated what she thought was a cult by writing Angsty Poetry with a purple pen?  Yeah, poetry like that.

Comments

[Lena]

Oh man, this book made me cry. I love verse novels and they're so easy to sell to reluctant teen readers. (I'm a YA librarian)

[Kay]

Ooooo Veronica Mars!!!! I heart her!!!

[sharon]

omg i read the first 5 or so pages and i instently fell in love with this book. i have to read it but i cant find it anywhere:-(sigh

[Nike Air Max 2009]

Inspiring post. I believe anything and everything that comes to us - good or bad - are gifts that we deserve. We may not think of it as a gift at the exact moment it comes to
us. But sooner or later, it shows itself as the blessing it really is.