Daffodil Franklin just graduated high school and needs a job to earn enough for room/board so she can attend Bryn Mawr College and get out of Nebraska. She is on the train on her way to school when she happens to get off in Scarlet Mills, Pennsylvania. She starts knocking on doors, inquiring about jobs and finds one housesitting for a wealthy couple who live on the outskirts of town. Once she starts the job, weird things start happening in the house. She starts hearing noises outside, like animals scratching and then a pot she had boiling on the stove just moved to the middle of the kitchen floor. She doesn’t know about the house’s history and any rumors about the house either.

So this was a really interesting and fast read. It was in first person, actually Daffodil was talking directly to the reader trying to convince them that what they are reading was real and actually happened which was a super interesting approach that I have never read before. For me it did get a little distracting and hard to follow since she was unraveling during the latter part of the book which was the point but I still found it hard to figure out what was going on. I did eventually figure it out. It was an interesting concept and with an ending I never saw coming.

Thanks to Harper Teen and Netgalley for the complimentary copy of this book in e-book form. All opinions in this review are my own.

Did I like This is Not a Ghost Story? I honestly don’t know how I feel.
It took until about halfway through the book for it to hit its stride. That’s when it started to be hard to put down. You still have absolutely no idea what’s going on in the story, but it picks up the pace. The short chapters made it easy to keep reading just one more for the night, and before I knew it, the book was done.
I’m undecided if I like the style of the book. Daffodil, the narrator, talks directly to the reader, and there are a lot of asides, parentheses, offbeat jokes. On the one hand, it makes the story feel more immediate and creates a closer connection to Daffodil. On the other, it was a bit much at times. There was sometimes very little content, and it could be repetitive.
I’ll give it this; now I want to make people read it just to see what they think of it.

A delightfully twisty read, THIS IS NOT A GHOST STORY is a wonderful story in the under-served YA horror market. Darkly funny and terrifying by turns, Portes' writing is a joy and I look forward to reading more of her work.

*I received an ARC from NetGalley for my honest opinion of this book*

Daffodil sees a house, covered in daffodils. Someone answers, and they offer her a job that she so desperately needs. She so desperately needs this job, so she can afford her first semester of college. How could this situation be any more perfect?

Or is it?

Of course the title is "This is Not a Ghost Story" but this book wastes no time sucking you in and getting WEIRD. As if spending your summer in a countryside mansion, alone, being paid to house sit and oversee the guest house being built in the back of the house is anywhere near normal, but it's money, right?

I really enjoyed this book. The narration and commentary was so relatable, often times funny! The main character, Daffodil, was witty and likeable. She often spoke her mind with the exact thoughts I think a lot of us have had. As funny as it could get, though, it had plenty of the creep factor that you'd expect in a ghost story, without being a ghost story. Or is it? There were times I was reading this book and I thought to myself "What in the world is going on here?" This is definitely not one to miss. If you're thinking of picking it up, do it!

Warning- set time aside to read this once you start it and actually the less you know about this book the more you will enjoy it (funny to say as I'm writing this review). Let's just say I saw a prior comment about this book that while not an exact spoiler, still gave something away and I wish I hadn't saw it.

Daffodil isn't likable but that totally works. Although predictable I still enjoyed this book. Don't let the YA aspect of the book fool you -it still has a bit of an eerie factor for adults too.

I read it really quickly, which is probably the only reason I did read it. I don't even know what to say. I kind of felt like I needed to be on something to appreciate the book. I don't really think there was an actual point to this book. It was just a bunch of words jumbled together.

I am always looking for good horror novels, and this one did not disappoint. It is a nice, slow building, almost gothic horror feel story of Daffodil and the summer before her freshman year in college, housesitting for strangers. As we witness strange things begin to happen around Daffodil, we are also learning small parts of her past. There were many times that I thought that I knew what was going on in the story, only to have a new creepy window open.

I thought this was a good book. Well-written. I loved the story itself. It was really interesting and a fun read.

Portes has written a unique, eerie, and bittersweet tale of Gothic suspense as well as melancholy, and boy does it work. Our narrator, Daffodil, has a stream of consciousness tone that, though hard to settle into at first, makes for an endearing and unintentionally unreliable voice. As she settles into the house she is housesitting, her need to cling to skepticism downplays the strange things happening, which in turn makes it all the more creepy. As we start to learn more about Daffodil's background and what led her to take this position, we get a well drawn out and heartbreaking portrait of trauma and loss, and I ended up really liking her. In terms of scary, there are definitely creepy elements to this story, and seen through Daffodil's eyes we get to experience the panic first hand. But there is also a tender and sad undercurrent to this story, just like there can be with many ghost stories, and it only enhanced the narrative as it went on.

THIS IS NOT A GHOST STORY is quiet and creepy, but also quietly sad and tender. It wasn't what I expected, in all the best ways possible.

This definitely ended up being a lot sweeter than I expected! The writing style has a stream of consciousness to it, but I didn't mind it in this particular story, as the author gave it almost a noir feel. While I wish the story had been a bit longer and more developed, I also see why Portes chose to keep the narrative tight and streamlined. If you've read a story with this particular twist at the ending, you'll probably see it coming like I did, but I still appreciate what the author did by taking a scary story and giving it a heart of gold.

When I first requested This Is Not a Ghost Story on Netgalley, I wasn’t aware that it was a YA novel. I only read the blurb and it sounded creepy enough for me. That being said, I’m definitely not the targeted age group this book. I did read it regardless, but I found little to enjoy.

For one, the protagonist, Daffodil, is trying way too hard to be witty. No one would tell a story like that, especially not a 17 year old girl all on her own. It just didn’t work for me.

It also wasn’t very creepy, which I get it’s YA, but I found very little horror elements in all. Thinking back to what I read at 15 years old, for example, I doubt I would’ve found this creepy or suspenseful. The pacing of the book was also a bit odd, and felt jumbled in some places. I’m not sure if that was intended or not.

It ended up being a love story more than anything, so I’m not sure why the blurb mentions American Horror Story (which is one of my favorite shows). I did appreciate the ending even if it was a bit abrupt. It was definitely a good twist.

Thank you for this review copy Netgalley and HarperTeen.

Daffodil has a plan. She desperately needs to get out of Nebraska (because it’s Nebraska) and because of “the thing she can’t think about,” so she leaves early for college to find a summer job that will help her pay for her room and board. When she stumbles across a professor who will pay her to watch over his house and the construction at his home while he is gone, she can’t turn the opportunity down. At first, she doesn’t even question the large amount of money she was offered. Then unexplained things start happening. Daffodil must figure out what is going on because she can’t afford to leave.

I have always loved books that feature a character in isolation and I loved this even more in a haunted house setting. While Daffodil could be a little intense at times, I think this added to the overall tone of the story as she is trying to convince herself that nothing is really happening at the house and she is just paranoid. I love that the title of the book even matches this idea of Daffodil convincing herself there aren’t any ghosts. As the story progresses, Daffodil starts to have more and more flashbacks to her life in Nebraska despite trying to push them away. At first, I didn’t really like these because I much preferred the plotline of her in the house. As they became more entwined in the plot though, I got on board. This is an extremely quick read, and it gets faster by the end of the book. I kind of wish more time had been spent on the events at the end of the book, but perhaps this would have slowed the book down too much. Overall, I highly recommend this book for its strong development of a spooky setting mixed with a character’s past.

So this is the story of Daffodil, who gets off of the train on her way to college and decides to take a summer job house-sitting for a rich couple. This house is currently under construction and the owners can't be there but they need someone to manage the workers. As Daffodil is there and watching the house, she gets this weird feeling about the place and things might not be as they seem.

This story is told from Daffodil's perspective. It is as if she's talking to you and in some cases this lets you get to know Daffodil and some of the things that are going on with her internally. You start to realize that she has gone through something very traumatic and she's trying to process that. But at the same time there are moments this perspective takes you out of the story because.She's got this perky sassy personality that pulls you out of this moody, creepy, atmosphere that I'm assuming was trying to be created in this house. There are some very creepy and mind-bending moments but because of how Daffodil is telling the story and the perspective she's coming from, it ends up diminishesing the horror aspect of this book. She was almost too upbeat and sarcastic about the whole event.

She was dealing with a lot of darker mental issues but it was just mentioned casually in passing, in a way that would be a red flag if it came out of anybody's mouth. But here it's played so down that it doesn't feel like it's of any consequence and that is a little bit concerning. Especially given some of the things she starts to talk about. I will put out a warning that if you are triggered by suicidal thoughts, this probably isn't the book for you.

There is a point in this book where things got so weird and you ended up getting no explanation for that. The ending was just there. And it made sense and things fell into place, but then it also opened up a whole bunch of other questions. It was just like - this is kind of what's happening, moving on. You never really got a clear understanding of why things happened. You got the why it was for her, but not the why of everything else.That is what left me kind of just meh about the story.

I relate lot to Daffodil's anxiety but I struggled with a lot of other aspects of her. You can definitely tell she was a teenager and she had a lot of selfish tendencies.

If you are looking for a read that is a little bit more on the trippy side of horror and has a lot of teenager influence, you will probably like this book. Overall it was okay for me. I'm not the most excited about it and it's probably not something I will pick up again. So take that for whatever you want it to mean.

This Is Not a Ghost Story is a well written book with a likeable main character. I didn't know much about the book going into it and really liked it in the beginning. It got weird for me around the middle of the book and then just never came back together for me. I could definitely see many people really enjoying this book, so I do recommend giving it a try. I just wasn't for me.

I had so many mixed feelings about this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the casual conversation the narrator has with the reader. That’s what connected me. The something happened that I don’t want to discuss trope was well done, and the ending reminded me of an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark. It was creepy but light at the same time. If you don’t love Daffy, we can’t be friends.

This book was absolutely fantastic. I've already added it to our library wishlist and recommended it to students.

SPOILERS

What a shame. I liked the world style here. I liked the character (although the girl who's "such a freak" and "totally unpopular" but also a beautiful white girl is pretty tiresome). But...

I knew the whole book that a "twist" was coming. That was telegraphed from the start. And because it's the most infamous and obvious horror "twist" I wondered pretty early on if she was dead.

MOST disappointingly, her afterlife, her "heaven" is spending eternity with a boyfriend that drunkenly threw a tantrum and killed them both because he was upset she was planning for her future? GROSS.

One thing that makes or breaks a YA novel, in my opinion, is the voice of the narrator. Because I am a huge fan of Gilmore Girls, I LOVED this book. Daffodil, the main character, speaks like Rory Gilmore, if you put Rory Gilmore in a haunted house and added a mysterious and tragic backstory. This was one book I finished, and then immediately told everybody I know to go read it because I loved it so much.

For some reason, the narrative voice in this novel just works so well. Daffodil, looking to escape from something, and looking for a quiet summer before her freshman year at Bryn Mawr, takes the house sitting job of a professor, which will allow her to pay for her first year of college. (Where can I get a job like that? Sign me up!) As Daffodil stays in the house, and lets us into the inner workings of her mind, we begin to realize there is more to this house--and to Daffodil--than maybe even she realizes at first. I was spooked, I was enchanted, and I wanted to give Daffy a big ol' hug and tell her it was going to be okay. I loved this book so much, and was the perfect spooky read for this Halloween season. I can't wait to give it to the teens in my area, because I know they'll love it so much too.

This book unfortunately did not work for me. I could not get into the writing style.

Thank you Netgalley for an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. I wish it was better.

What a fantastic ride! Daffodil finds the perfect summer job that will allow her to pay for her first year of college. She's been wanting to leave Nebraska since the "thing that we do not mention" occurred. This too perfect job starts playing with her mental health but she knows that she has to stay in order to be free of her past. The writing is fresh and spunky to reflect the inner workings of Daffodil. I enjoyed the plot just as much as the dialog and writing of Daffodil's internal thinking.