Charlotte Usher starts the new school year at Hawthorne High determined to be an in-crowd student rather than the invisible one that she has been.  Her plan is on track until she swallows a gummy bear and dies.

It takes a while to accept that a dead girl can go around planning to attend the Fall Dance with the school’s super jock and causing havoc among the other dead at Hawthorne Manor.

Since Charlotte is dead, the author has access to some entertaining puns and word play.  For example diary becomes DIEary.  Even some of the living people have names associated with death.  The principal’s name is Mr. Styx.

A large part of the novel is spent on the relationship between Charlotte and Scarlet, the only living person who is able to see Charlotte.  Charlotte enters Scarlet's body (with Scarlet’s approval) to achieve many of her plans such as dancing with super stud Damien at the Fall Dance.

Even with all the word play and unlikely circumstances, the novel does say something about how we sometimes feel invisible and the things we will do to be noticed, i.e. to be popular.