U UP?

December 14, 2020
Disabato (The Ghost Network) offers a poignant if strained story of grief, ghosts, and friendship. When Eve, a Los Angeles slacker and witch, finds out her best friend, Ezra, is going to Palm Springs with his girlfriend, Noz, on the anniversary weekend of their friend Miggy’s suicide, thus breaking Eve and Ezra’s initial plans to honor Miggy together, Eve is livid. Various text threads unspool through Eve’s narration, including one with Miggy’s ghost, who encourages Eve to let Ezra “deal with his grief in his own way.” After Eve gets a “u up?” text from Ezra, she learns Noz has just broken up with him, and by the next day, Ezra has stopped responding to her messages. Fearing Ezra has disappeared, Eve drops everything to find him. As she searches for clues to Ezra’s whereabouts, meeting up with various mutual friends amid texting and hooking up with her ex-girlfriend, Disabato makes clear—heavy-handedly—that Eve has some lessons to learn about selfishness and recognizing other people’s feelings. Though the ending’s twists are unsurprising, Disabato makes Eve’s friend group come alive on the page and in her texts. Still, other novels have done more with similar milieux.

February 1, 2021
Eve can see ghosts, and she's currently texting one. Her friend Miguel took his own life almost a year ago, but they're still talking. Miggy's in her phone and can see all her texts, supervising everything from Eve's drunken hookups to her coke-fueled bad decisions. Eve, who lives in L.A., has an easy job at a tour company, so she doesn't have much to do beyond hanging with her tight-knit friend group and partying down. But when Eve's closest friends, Ezra and Nozlee, break up, Ezra disappears, and Eve starts to wonder if she's going to lose them, too. She launches into a search, which takes her into a dizzying series of revelations, confronting even more ghosts--including those of her past. This heady, sexy novel is filled with the carefree wildness of youth, with an added metaphysical bonus. Eve's voice is enticing and compelling, and readers will be carried along with her as she learns more about herself than she ever planned. Give this one to fans of Sally Rooney and Casey McQuiston.

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