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Get Out meets Holly Jackson in this YA social thriller where survival is not a guarantee.
Sixteen-year-old Jake Livingston sees dead people everywhere. But he can't decide what's worse: being a medium forced to watch the dead play out their last moments on a loop or being at the mercy of racist teachers as one of the few Black students at St. Clair Prep. Both are a living nightmare he wishes he could wake up from. But things at St. Clair start looking up with the arrival of another Black student—the handsome Allister—and for the first time, romance is on the horizon for Jake.
Unfortunately, life as a medium is getting worse. Though most ghosts are harmless and Jake is always happy to help them move on to the next place, Sawyer Doon wants much more from Jake. In life, Sawyer was a troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school before taking his own life. Now he's a powerful, vengeful ghost and he has plans for Jake. Suddenly, everything Jake knows about dead world goes out the window as Sawyer begins to haunt him. High school soon becomes a different kind of survival game—one Jake is not sure he can win.
Get Out meets Holly Jackson in this YA social thriller where survival is not a guarantee.
Sixteen-year-old Jake Livingston sees dead people everywhere. But he can't decide what's worse: being a medium forced to watch the dead play out their last moments on a loop or being at the mercy of racist teachers as one of the few Black students at St. Clair Prep. Both are a living nightmare he wishes he could wake up from. But things at St. Clair start looking up with the arrival of another Black student—the handsome Allister—and for the first time, romance is on the horizon for Jake.
Unfortunately, life as a medium is getting worse. Though most ghosts are harmless and Jake is always happy to help them move on to the next place, Sawyer Doon wants much more from Jake. In life, Sawyer was a troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school before taking his own life. Now he's a powerful, vengeful ghost and he has plans for Jake. Suddenly, everything Jake knows about dead world goes out the window as Sawyer begins to haunt him. High school soon becomes a different kind of survival game—one Jake is not sure he can win.
2156 Reviews
3.0
Cammy Wendt
Created about 17 hours agoShare
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Caleb Thomas
Created about 18 hours agoShare
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“Not shocked that I didn't love this one. I think I am moving out of the YA reading space. I struggle with the characters as a whole and even when there is an intriguing and captivating plot, the characters are annoying enough to ruin it for me.
I think this book had a really good idea. It sought to paint the rise and fall of a school shooter from both angles. Think of the movie Joker and how it is so easy to relate to the plight that the eventual antagonist is forced to endure until the breaking point. It is relatable up until that point and that is the deviation point in which our bullied and down-trodden character truly becomes the villain. On the flip side we also see those around that character that are cruel and hateful towards them, thus driving them to make that turn. I have always enjoyed stories of this nature. Not in an effort to humanize a villainous character but to understand that humanity has two sides, light and dark.
I also really enjoyed the horror elements. Some of the explanations and depictions of the supernatural elements were a little cheesy, but overall I enjoyed the teen slasher-esque tension that Douglass built. The descriptions of the ghouls and ghosts reliving their final moments in graphic detail was great. All-in-all it handled the horror well. It didn't fall into too many of the trope traps that these books usually do and if the characters were a little less....well just less, it could have been a decent book.
With that said, I think the book really fell apart at the end. How they handled the resolution and how the ending of the book attempts to include all of the romance that the book has to offer was a poor choice. I would have rather seen the romance sprinkled more gradually throughout the book and I wish the resolution between Jake and Sawyer had ended drastically different. It feels extremely unbelievable that there wouldn't be last implications and trouble for Jake. That's all I am going to say in an effort to not spoil the book.
Unfortunately, I wouldn't recommend this book broadly and think there are quite a few books that do this type of story better, but I believe this was a debut and I am interested to research Douglass's other books and give them another shot. If there is something more literary or in the adult realm I would consider reading more from this author.”
Laigha O'Brien
Created 5 days agoShare
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“i might come back to it later but holy moly was this boring. such a short book yet it felt ten years long. so much was happening and i was still bored. i may have just not been in the right mindset for it. great representation though!!”
Courteney Cutknife
Created 10 days agoShare
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Milena Henríquez
Created 13 days agoShare
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About Ryan Douglass
Ryan Douglass is a queer horror author and freelance writer from Atlanta, Georgia. His work on media representation has appeared in HuffPost, Atlanta Black Star, LGBTQ Nation, and the National Council of Teachers of English, among others. He received his BA in theater studies from Hofstra University and is currently a nomad floating across the United States. The Taking of Jake Livingston is his first novel.
Other books by Ryan Douglass
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