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Past Midnight Miniseries, No. 1
Mara Purnhagen
Harlequin Teen
September 1, 2010 / ISBN 0373210205
Young Adult / Fantasy / Ghost
Amazon
Reviewed
by Linda Morelli
Charlotte Silver’s
parents are paranormal investigators who film documentaries. It’s
a profession that has meant that Charlotte and her older sister,
Annalise, have traveled constantly with their parents. Their latest
investigation is at the Courtyard Café in Charleston, SC.
Annalise participates in the investigations, while Charlotte remains
in the background, helping with AV equipment. When summer ends,
Annalise heads off to college, and Charlotte’s parents decide
to settle down in a small town two hours’ drive from Charleston
so they can continue to investigate the Café and other nearby
localities.
Charlotte is thrilled that she can spend her senior year in one
school, but fears that her schoolmates will soon discover her parents’
profession which, in the past, has resulted in painful experiences.
Charlotte soon makes friends at the school and gets involved in
an AV class. Charlotte’s chance at a normal senior year is
thwarted when she discovers that “ghosts” have followed
her from Charleston. While her parents try to figure out why, the
truth of their profession leaks out. Though she fears the ghosts
that plague her, Charlotte soon realizes that her new schoolmates
are haunted by secrets of their own.
Past Midnight is an intriguing paranormal that centers
on a young teen’s adjustment to a new school and friends,
and that teen’s fight to be rid of the ghosts that haunt her.
While the paranormal events themselves are not very scary, the background
information provided regarding psychic investigations is intriguing
in that the characters use a scientific approach, which makes the
novel more realistic. Mara Purnhagen has done an excellent job laying
the groundwork for her future releases in this paranormal series
featuring Charlotte Silver as the main character.
Also, Past Midnight is one of those rare novels where parents
play a large role in the young adult story. It’s a novel that
blends wholesome family and teen friendships into a pleasant read,
one lacking the frequent parties, cussing or rambunctiousness found
in some of the more prominent teen novels today. In short, Past
Midnight is a delightful, fast-paced novel with wonderful main and
secondary characters and a solid plot. It’s also a book parents
will feel comfortable in letting their teenagers read.
Reviewers
Note: Next release in the series, One Hundred Candles,
comes out March 2011.
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