The Haunting of Sunshine Girl by Paige McKenzie: This book didn't have a ghost of a chance

I have resorted to puns. I apologize.

The Haunting of Sunshine Girl 

by 

Paige McKenzie

Sunshine is sure that her house is haunted. It’s freezing all the time and there’s strange noises like giggling and running feet in the middle of the night. Even her stuff has been moved, everything from her stuffed owl (his name is Dr. Hoo, you’ve got to appreciate the pun, if nothing else) to her old board games. And still, with all this evidence and even some pretty creepy pictures Sunshine took with her camera, her mother is unable to believe the haunting. As her mom begins falling ill from unseen supernatural forces, Sunshine takes it upon herself to rid the house of it's ghosts before its too late for her and her mom.

Note from the Editor: And with a name like "Sunshine" we all know there's a silver lining to the situation? Does she end up in someone's pocket? "Got that sunshine in my pocket, got that good song in my feet..." Or, wait, maybe the love interest sings "You are my Sunshine," because that would be awesome. Shiny, actually. Okay, okay, I'm done.

Characters

Sunshine: I honestly liked Sunshine. If for no other reason than that she wasn’t like the vast majority of YA heroines. I appreciated that she cared about her appearance while not being too prissy about. I mean, it got a bit out of hand every once in a while, but YA heroines aren’t usually allowed to give a crap about their clothes or hair, so I had to appreciate her for the effort. Even if her name is Sunshine. Really hammering that metaphor home, aren’t ya my dear writerly friend? Still Sunshine was a perfectly serviceable and occasionally enjoyable character who is probably the most intelligent heroine to ever grace the pages of a ghost story. Unfortunately, I think I might be a bit overprotective of Sunshine because people on Goodreads called her a prude for wearing odd clothes. Piss off guys. That’s not necessary at all.

Note From the Editor: Yeah, you half-naked hippies! Go back to the trendy hole from which you came! You do realize, that being tolerant includes everybody, not just the people who fit your idea of a minority group? right? Otherwise that's just a plot hole.

Nolan: Full disclosure, I really liked Nolan. He’s probably my favorite character in the book. Maybe because he was the exact opposite of what I expected from the love interest. What?! He was introduced as this silly leather jacketed boy, who I assumed would be some half-baked box of bad boy clichés. But nope! He was an utter dork. He spent his time in art making stupid collages to entertain himself. Also, he low key annoys the teacher; who was bonkers, in his defense, but I feel like I shouldn’t encourage such behavior. It also helped that he had this great scene where said bonkers teacher asked if his pipe cleaner collage represented death, he said yes because he has no shame. It kind of reminded me of Harry and Ron lying their way through divination.  

       

Kat: who is not me, which makes me sad. She’s Sunshine’s mum. I have to give her credit for being decent; for a parent character, at least. She was still contractually obligated to disappear halfway through the book so that adventure could happen.

Likes

There wasn’t a huge emphasis on the romance: Hey, I’ll take what I can get. I could even stand what little romance there was in it because I really liked Nolan. In fact, I think this is the first time in a long while where I liked the love interest better than the main character.

Note From the Editor: Dude, the fact that you liked the romance at is a miracle. And, you had better have liked the dorky bad boy, he sounds awesome.

Credit where credit is due: It’s a pretty impressive scary story. Just because I wasn’t scared in the slightest doesn’t mean it’s bad. Heck! It even took a few turns that I didn’t expect. Sure, I didn’t really like those turns. In fact, a few them I thought were pretty stupid. But hey! Props for trying right? It’s not often that I’m surprised by a book.

Dislikes

It was, as usual, not scary in the slightest: Then again, I can’t really blame the book for that because I’m not one to be scared by ghosts. Like, at all. I read ghost stories like I read mysteries; to learn how the ghost died and sift through the clues to find the murder. At the risk of sounding cliché-ly ‘deep’ I find human beings to be much scarier than whatever undead monster the author can come up with. I don’t think it’s that weird in my mind, after all what can be scarier than circumstances that turn an ordinary person into a murder? That is, unless it’s put down to supernatural BS! Basically, ghosts killing people to make more ghosts is the biggest cop out to ever cop out.

They pulled a special snowflake trope on me: Look, I can put up with Sunshine’s stupid name and her old time-y clothes (heck I probably dress like her) I can even pass over her ‘special snowflake eyes’. But I draw the line at the odd fantasy-esque guardian of the human’s plot twist (and I use that in the loosest sense of the word). There’s only so much I can take guys.

              In the end the book was pretty meh. 

Which for a YA ghost story is pretty surprising. I certainly enjoyed it, but I can’t really say I'd recommend it because it wasn’t anything special. Apparently, it’s based off some YouTube web series so I might check that out at some point. Just out of curiosity.