Funeral Girl

by Emma K. Ohland

Overview

Sixteen-year-old Georgia Richter feels conflicted about the funeral home her parents run—especially because she has the ability to summon ghosts.

With one touch of any body that passes through Richter Funeral Home, she can awaken the spirit of the departed. With one more touch, she makes the spirit disappear, to a fate that remains mysterious to Georgia. To cope with her deep anxiety about death, she does her best to fulfill the final wishes of the deceased whose ghosts she briefly revives.

Then her classmate Milo's body arrives at Richter—and his spirit wants help with unfinished business, forcing Georgia to reckon with her relationship to grief and mortality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781728458007
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/06/2022
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	661,985
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.88(d)
Lexile:	720L (what's this?)
Age Range:	11 - 12 Years

About the Author

Emma K. Ohland (she/they) is an author who has been telling stories since before she knew how to write them down. She grew up in the middle of a cornfield in Indiana, but her imagination often carried her away to other worlds. She graduated from Purdue University with a B.A. in English literature. Her first YA novel, Funeral Girl, was selected as a 2023 Children's Book Committee at Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the Year. She lives in Texas with her partner, their cat, and their dog.

Editorial Reviews

"Georgia Richter, 16 and asexual, has an uncanny, secret ability: she can wake the dead with a touch and return them to death with a second touch. Her talent is weirdly apposite, since she lives in her family's funeral home, where corpses are always, ahem, at hand. Things become personal when a classmate, Milo, is killed in a hit-and-run accident and brought to the funeral home. Though she hardly knew him when he was alive, she finds herself drawn into his life in death, and they become tentative friends. But what will happen when she discovers that she can't return Milo to death? Unfortunately, Georgia is not always a sympathetic character: she is solipsistic and judgmental, and she treats her best friend, Amy (who is the only out enby in school), badly. There is, arguably, some justification for this, since Georgia is obsessed by death and terrified of dying. Accordingly, give Ohland's first novel high marks for its unusual premise and vivid characterization of its imperfect protagonist." — Booklist

From the Publisher

2022-06-08
Haunted every day by the inescapability of death, Georgia awakens the dead who pass through her family’s funeral home, fulfilling their final requests and clinging to their memories.

No one in Georgia’s family knows about her secret power to speak with ghosts or understands her overwhelming anxiety, especially not Peter, her perfect twin brother, who loves the family business and embraces the expectation that they will one day run it together. When one of their classmates dies, Georgia becomes consumed by her desperation to help the ghost of a boy she barely knew. Touched by the supernatural, this debut grapples with grief and mental health, exploring the differing ways people cope with emotions, how the living memorialize the dead, and who is entitled to mourn them. In the midst of her fixation, asexual Georgia also faces turmoil in her relationships with her empathetic, nonbinary, Chinese American best friend, Amy; her Black ex–best friend, Eileen; and Peter. The story is set in a town with little racial or religious diversity, and Amy and Eileen, the only significant characters of color in the novel, are notably less well developed and well rounded than the White protagonist. However, the narrative handles the heavy topic of death with honest complexity.

A moody, contemplative ghost story with uneven characterization. (author’s note, discussion questions) (Paranormal. 13-18)

Kirkus Reviews

Narrator Jess Nahikian’s tender delivery suits this audiobook about a girl who lives in a funeral home. Georgia, voiced delicately in a youthful tone, has tremendous anxiety about death. To cope, she uses her ability to awaken the ghosts of the dead to fulfill their final wishes and hold onto their memories. Then her classmate Milo dies in an accident, and her town’s performative mourning, along with Milo’s personal request, increases her desperation to help, despite having barely known him before he died. Nahikian’s soothing voice allows young listeners to process heavy topics like death and mourning. Characters are given distinct voices, and Nahikian’s emotional tones honestly convey their complex feelings. A.K.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2022 - AudioFile

Narrator Jess Nahikian’s tender delivery suits this audiobook about a girl who lives in a funeral home. Georgia, voiced delicately in a youthful tone, has tremendous anxiety about death. To cope, she uses her ability to awaken the ghosts of the dead to fulfill their final wishes and hold onto their memories. Then her classmate Milo dies in an accident, and her town’s performative mourning, along with Milo’s personal request, increases her desperation to help, despite having barely known him before he died. Nahikian’s soothing voice allows young listeners to process heavy topics like death and mourning. Characters are given distinct voices, and Nahikian’s emotional tones honestly convey their complex feelings. A.K.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2022 - AudioFile