Book Review: Shadowed Summer

TITLE: Shadowed Summer
AUTHOR: Saundra Mitchell
PUBLISHED: 2009
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: Paranormal, mystery
PREMISE: Iris lives in a small town where pretty much nothing happens. Then she and her friend make contact with a ghost. A ghost who starts haunting Iris...
MY REVIEW: For the most part I enjoyed this. It was more of that southern gothic thing that is going around (and as I said in my review of Beautiful Creatures: Bring it on!) and was pretty well written for amount of pages it was. You got a very good idea of who these characters were, the setting was perfect for a spooky ghost story, and there were even some twists. Not much twists but twists nontheless.
That said...I wish it was longer. Because I felt like this could have been much longer and made even deeper if it were a full novel. Although maybe less of Collette because I kind of found her to be very annoying. Plus the drama between her and Ben and Iris seemed kind of forced and thrown in just because nowadays you apparently can't have a YA novel without any romance or drama.
But other then that, this was a very satisfying novel, if a bit short. If you're in the mood for a spooky ghost story, this book does the trick. I would also like to say from experience that it's best read during a summer thunderstorm, because the storm helps set the mood of the book. May I just say that this would make an excellent tv movie? Well...as long as it's not a tv movie done by Hallmark or Disney Channel (because then the twist with Ethan and Iris's gay uncle would be thrown out of the plot and I kind of loved Iris's gay uncle). I can see it working well on Lifetime or ABCFamily maybe...
WHO SHOULD READ: Ghost story fans
MY RATING: Four out of five rock throwing ghosts

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