Latest read: The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson. A teenage transfer student gains the ability to see ghosts and investigates a modern-day copycat of Jack the Ripper. The concept is intriguing and well-executed, and the book combines standard YA tropes with supernatural suspense and murder mystery stuff. But the ending leaves things hanging, and the pacing and tone are terribly uneven -- the first half of the book is a YA story with subtextual ghosts, almost magic realism. The second half is a cool crimebusting mystery-suspense action, with most of the characters and plot threads from the first half all but ignored. While it's still a good book, unless it's the start to a series, it introduces too many extraneous elements, and really needed an editor to chop and restructure.
Still, even if it was a hodgepodge, it was enjoyable throughout, whatever it was trying to be at the moment.
