A witty and macabre paranormal YA book! I would have loved this as a teen and enjoyed it now, too. Would recommend to fans of the genre.

Dr. Andy’s Top 5 Reasons to read Here Lies Olive by Kate Anderson:
-Detailed themes of grief and healing at your own rate!
-Ex besties reuniting platonically!
-Existential dread and learning to cope! (I mean this in the most goth and positive way)
-Falling for the HOT overachiever girl who was big family trauma!
-Well crafted and tense murder mystery!

A Young Adult horror story with a mystery. Olive is cynical about the afterlife. She feels like there is nothing after we die. Like what is life without anything afterwards, a void. She summons someone from the dead, he is a spirit that is trapped on our plane and cannot leave. She is willing help him find his grave and in turn he helps her to find what she is looking for. Meanwhile there are deaths occurring amongst her classmates. Olive recruits others to try to solve these crimes. An entertaining story, great characters and a well throughout plot.


Disclaimer: Thank you NetGalley and North Star Editions/Flux for this review copy and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Thank you for letting me read an ARC of this book! I really enjoyed reading it and I felt that it was a perfect read for spooky season! The story was super fun and also deep at the same time. I also thought that the characters were well-developed and I felt a genuine connection to all of them, not only the main character. Additionally, the plot twists in the novel were absolutely crazy and always kept me hooked. Overall I liked to book a lot and would reccomend!

I actually prefer YA horror over adult horror! I love that this book features a queer protagonist and appreciate this author's style. I'm really interested to see what she will write next.

Thank you to NetGalley and the team at Flux for gifting me and ARC in exchange for my completly honest review.

Really wanted to rate this higher as I loved the tension during the asylum scenes. The first big scene within the house was so well described and unnerving ~ easily could have been pages longer, love descriptions of abandoned buildings. The setting gets one star alone, the spooky nature and characterisation get half a star each.

Unfortunately I ended up putting this book down for a few months (binge read the last 70% in one day) because: the similes.
Man, the similes really started to get me right away. Like okay we get it. I usually love over-descriptive writing. I’m even guilty of doing it in my own writing but there were times were even I felt like every action was over described constantly. Sometimes people just breathe, or sit or have emotions they don’t have to be likened to something else.
For example “made a noise in the back of my throat like a bone snapping” - I- I really don’t know how to even interpret that in my imagination because what? I get what it was going for I really do but no. (No like really, have a go - I don’t think it’s anatomically possible for us to actually make that noise with our throats). One quote I really did like however was phase “with a voice full of dirt”, that-that was eerie (and very good foreshadowing.)

Also because the repetition really got the better of me, for your reading entertainment I present the ‘Here Lies Olive Drinking Game’:

Drink everytime there’s a death pun
Drink everytime Olive brings up almost dying double points if she mentions the cause…again
Drink everytime Vanessa fondles her ribbon
Drink everytime Jay turns into part skeleton
Drink every time Maron (somehow?) twists her hair around her wrists
Drink every time the word brittle is used when describing speech
Drink every time Olive’s fillings ‘jolt’, she should really get those checked.
And lastly shot for everytime you think ‘you just openly communicated you know you’re being manipulated and then completely ignoring it a sentence later and going along with it anyway — Why?’

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

Thank you NetGalley for approving me to read this arc.

Since anaphylactic shock in which Olive's heart stopped beating for a few seconds the girl is terrified that there is no afterlife. But the death of her surrogate grandmother, during which older woman starts calling someone seconds before her last breath, the teenager is not so sure anymore. In order to find out she decides to summon a ghost in order to ask them about what happen after you die. Unfortunately when the ghost - Jay - that she summoned appeared, the attacks on teenagers near to the place he is tied with has started. Now Olive must help him to find peace and maybe also find one herself while searching for his grave.

I didn't expect this much fun from the book. Olive is very interesting character because she is a teenager who starts questioning meaning of life. That is not a topic very common in YA books and her journey through these thoughts is executed really well. We also have some paranormal aspects that make the story more creepy and the vibe is truly there. There is a really subtle romantic arc that is sweet and makes sense. Characters beside our main character are interesting, they all have their own journey in the book and not are just sidekicks in order to just help Olive with her mission. Overall I had a bash and I really can recommend this book to everyone who feels held captive by the description.

This book was okay. And I hate saying that about any book. It didn't engage me enough to read it on time, but the premise of it sounded so good and right up my street!

I love a good book about being able to speak to spirits/where spirits are some of the characters, but this one, unfortunately, was not for me.

I questioned whether I should DNF the book multiple times, but I pushed through, hoping it would improve. Now, I could understand if this book was directed towards the younger side of a YA audience, tackling themes of death and sexuality, but even then, the story felt hollow and slightly rushed, which was unfortunate.

I appreciate and thank the publishers and Netgalley for providing me with an eArc in exchange for my honest review. I'm sorry that I ended up not being the target audience. The message and review are all my own honest opinions.

(2.5 stars rounded up to 3)

Interesting world. The last 1/8 of the book read like a totally different book.Truthfully, I don’t have a lot of feedback to give on this title. There was nothing wrong with it, it was a perfectly fine book. But, despite being initially drawn in by the premise, I was let down by the plot. It was really just… fine. I wasn’t “wowed” and I wasn’t appalled, it was just perfectly okay.

I like the premise of this book. A girl who can see and speak to spirits seemed right up my alley. Unfortunately, I made it to around 60% and DNFed it. I loved the characters. They were fun and well written and I honestly imagined them as my friends in I in school. Olive is even a spooky rockabilly girl like myself. But my issue came in what I can only describe and me feeling like the story was just dragging on too slowly. Maybe I'm too old to read and enjoy the book, and I did go into it knowing it's for a younger audience. Or maybe I'd have enjoyed a physical copy better. I do plan to pick one up and try it again. I did enjoy Kate Anderson's writing style. It was descriptive and fun and just easy to follow. I'd probably try out more books by her.

DNF @21%

I'm going to refrain from rating or reviewing this one on Goodreads as I struggled to get invested enough in the story to have any constructive comments either way.

Thank you to Netgalley and publishers for providing me the opportunity to read this in exchange for my honest feedback.

Thank you to Flux books for the ARC and for including me on the book tour and cover reveal a few months ago!

I loved the cover for this when I first saw it and the synopsis sounded right up my alley from the start and i'm so glad i ended up enjoying this. Olive was an easy character to read from and it was also really easy to empathize with the very obvious grief she's still going through from losing someone close to her (even if she doesn't like to admit it) and dealing with complicated feelings from her OWN near death experience. Seeing everything she did to try and shield herself from ever feeling that type of hurt again and then getting to watch those shields come down as she learned that it wasn't the right way to deal with it made me happy to watch. I liked what all the characters did for the story even if i didn't like some of them totally either lol. Maren was my favorite honestly, I loved how her difficult feelings on being a Seymour were handled and how that changed her character as we learned more about her. She's a fierce character that never just took things, she always fought it but she was also the first to admit the Seymour's wrongdoings. I wish we got more about Davis though, besides the stuff we learned from Olive since she was already his best friend I kinda wanted to know how his relationship with his parents changed at the end and how that all resolved. Vanessa wasn't my favorite at all, but if you've read the book I think she's literally written to be that way, being as its said multiple times she's manipulative and Olive doesn't even trust her. I cant say a ton about that whole thing without spoiling stuff though so Ill leave it there. I still don't completely understand what exactly freed Jay in the end so I also wish there was more explanation to that but I thought he was such a sweetheart of a character, i'm glad he got his peaceful ending.

I like how the paranormal spooky ghost things were just kind of common place and normal in the story, it mixed really easily with I guess you would call it "real world" stuff. It wasn't shocking to any of the characters and it didnt slow the story down so that they could have their "oh no, this cant be happening this stuff is fake!" moment and I appreciated that they just easily understood and accepted it and moved along. I wish the plot had moved a little quicker though even still because I feel like there were a few chapters that dragged before we got back into the action. But I loved all the chapter titles they were so fun and so in theme with the book, I wish more books used them still and had as much character in them as Here Lies Olive did. Overall I had fun with this story, I think if your looking for something quick to read that will give you a tiny bit of the spooks (the shades were a lil scary alright) but also have a lot of great things to say about grief, trauma, shame and guilt then this ones for you. Thank you again to Flux for the arc!

Meanwhile, someone—or something—is targeting Olive’s classmates, and the longer Jay lingers, the more serious the attacks become. Blaming herself for having brought Jay back, Olive teams up with maybe-nemesis, maybe-crush Maren, ex-best friend Davis, and new girl Vanessa to free Jay’s spirit before he’s trapped as a malevolent shade and the attacks turn deadly. But in doing so, Olive must face her fear of death and risk losing another person she loves to the Nothing.

What happens when a girl wants to find out what is beyond after life ends?
We meet Olive. What she won’t tell you that she died. For a brief time, 5 minutes to be exact and she experienced that there’s… nothing. Floating in darkness. That can’t be it right? She’s terrified that life is meaningless without something to look forward to after it’s all over.
When she summons a spirit to answer her questions. She meets Jay, the hitchhiking ghost trapped in the woods behind the poorhouse where he died. Olive agrees to help to help find his unmarked grave in exchange for answers on what lies on the other side.Meanwhile, someone- or something-is targeting Olive's classmates, and the longer Jay lingers, the more serious the attacks become.Blaming herself for having brought Jay back, Olive teams up with maybe-nemesis, maybe-crush Maren, ex-best friend Davis, and new girl Vanessa to free Jay's spirit before he's trapped as a malevolent shade and the attacks turn deadly.But in doing so, Olive must face her fear of death and risk losing another person she loves to the Nothing.
For me this book left me feeling meh after reading the final sentence. Mainly cause I’m not the books target audience cause I feel like these are high school kids discovering ghosts and their sexuality. Which is relatable back in the day but the way it was handled was kind of a fumble. I didn’t find myself really connecting with any of the characters on a deeper level and this book took forever to get to the point.
I could tell who was the bad guy ( or girl in this case) from half way through the book and wasn’t impressed.
I did like that I could decipher one of the messages the author was trying to get a-crossed: tell people you love them while you have the chance.
Which was a sweet message. I just wish it was handled a little better.
2 star read.
Thanks to the folks at NetGalley for a copy of this book. My review is a honest reflection of my feelings towards this book.

This was hard to get into and hard to follow at the beginning. I also found the chapter title pages to be distracting.
Once I got into it, it got interesting, and I thought it was a cool story with decent character development. I would have liked more description of the town, as it was mentioned in the description.

This book had a surprise ending, and I just love a good twist. I had a sneaking feeling about a character, and I was right, but man did I have a brief moment where I thought I was wrong. This story is delicately queer; meaning it’s slow to rise to the surface. I love this spooky little town the story takes place in. Bless Jay, I adore a ghost boy. I like how this book brings up the question that we all have thought, “what happens after we die”. I thoroughly enjoyed this Halloween-esque mystery.

Between the title of the first chapter and the first sentence of the book, I was immediately engaged.

Dark, gothic ambiance and classic ghost story vibes, but with modern and diverse characters that bring a refreshing depth to the story.
Very clever exploration of what comes after we die—and how to appreciate life while we have it

DNF - this was for a younger audience than I realized, and the rushed romance and character-building wasn't for me

Thank you to NetGalley, publishers, Kate Anderson for letting me read this arc!!

It definitely screams YA, which is okay! I thought the story wasn’t too complex, so you didn’t have to do too much thinking about the plot or the characters. I enjoyed the representation of the POC, queer community!
I do wish the characters had more depth to them, but I did love Olive’s personality, I just wish there was more to the characters, whether it be more background information, or conversation between the characters.

The one thing that I wasn’t absolutely sold on was the dialogue. Some was kind of cheesy, but some sentences I could absolutely see a teenager saying, my teenage self included.
Overall, I don’t think I’d recommend this to many of my friends because of it being YA, but if you’re looking for a quick, easy, and slightly spooky read, I would absolutely recommend. I would love to go back and read the final copy that has been published!