Arise Review

Arise (Hereafter #2)
by Tara Hudson
Expected Publication: 06.05.12
From Goodreads:

Amelia—still caught between life and death—must fight for every moment of her relationship with the human boy Joshua. They can hardly even kiss without Amelia accidentally dematerializing. Looking for answers, they go to visit some of Joshua’s Seer relatives in New Orleans. But even in a city so famously steeped in the supernatural, Amelia ends up with more questions than answers…and becomes increasingly convinced that she and Joshua can never have a future together.Wandering through the French Quarter, Amelia meets other in-between ghosts, and begins to seriously consider joining them. And then she meets Gabrielle. Somehow, against impossible odds, Gaby has found a way to live a sort of half-life...a half-life for which Amelia would pay any price. Torn between two worlds, Amelia must choose carefully, before the evil spirits of the netherworld choose for her.

My Thoughts:  Two things- first I really love ghost stories.  And thankfully at the moment, ghosts are popular.  Yay for ghosts!  Second- I did not realize when I signed up for the Arise arc tour that it was a second book in the Hereafter series.

Fail.

Luckily for me, despite being unfamiliar with the series, I was able to jump right in and enjoy Arise.  The only thing that confused me in the beginning was Jillian's age, she came across a lot younger until she jumped in her car and drove to school.  But that's okay, Jillian doesn't really matter.

I loved Joshua.  I loved how it was always Joshua and never Josh (it reminded me of Rachel in Friends and how she refused to shorten her boyfriend Joshua's name too). Joshua and Amelia have a really sweet love, a tad bit too co-dependent at times, but honestly, they're young, in love, and she's dead. 

And every time they make out, Amelia disappears.  Literally.  It's like the best teenage birth control method I have ever heard of.

I will totally let my kids date dead people.  Actually, maybe I should specify ghosts and not just dead people.  No one wants to raise a necrophiliac.

So, lots of stuff goes down in Arise, and I'm totally going to have to read the first book now, because of Eli.  We only briefly see him in the second book, but it sounds like he was a much bigger player and the cause of much trouble for our Amelia the friendly ghost in the first book.  Anyways, Eli is past, but the demons are back and they want Amelia to be their new Eli.  But even from this brief glimpse I realize that Eli was probably fairly bad boyish (bad ghostish?) in Hereafter.

And what does one do when confronted with the fact that demons may soon be torturing your loved ones if you don't help them?

That's right, road trip!

To New Orleans!   I love New Orleans, I love ghost stories set in New Orleans, and I love that Amelia ends up meeting new friend Gaby in a Voodoo store.  My only small complaint is that despite it being the most haunted city in America, there's only, like, five ghosts roaming around.  Not going to lie, that bugged me.

However, Amelia is all torn over Joshua and their relationship.  She's dealing with his grandma Ruth again, who totally tried to exorcise her in book one, and to top it off when they get to New Orleans Joshua's family has a Welcome to the House, Dead Girl teen seer gathering.

Seers can... see ghosts.  And other things.  Like we do.  Only it's like the Monster Squad of seers, so only two of them can see Amelia, but the rest can hear her.  Normally seers are all about banishing ghosts, but Joshua's cousins and friends appear to want to help Amelia.

Amelia is not immediately down with this.  She didn't just die yesterday, after all. She's got some good instincts, which is only cool when she actually listens to them. 

Besides all the demon fun, Amelia is also having strange dreams, which is unusual since as a ghost she doesn't really sleep.  And somebody is trying to send her a message about something.  It's still a little unclear as to what that message is, but I think it'll play in the next book.

For me this was a fun, fast read.  It was spooky, there was lots of action and some very pg romance, and even some humor- mostly in the form of Gaby.  And the place where Gaby lives = priceless.  I'm totally thinking about squatting in celeb's homes whilst they're away at rehab too.

So, by all means read Hereafter first.  I can't wait to read about Amelia and Joshua falling in love, so I will backtrack.  But if you for some reason find yourself with Arise like I did, not having read Hereafter will not negatively impact your reading experience of Arise.  Unless you're particularly dumb, but you probably wouldn't be reading at all if you were, so problem solved.

And I can't wait to read the next book!

Arise gets a Midnight Book Rating of:

The cover gets a Midnight Book Cover Rating of:

I love this cover, which is why I wanted to do the tour.  I love that you can see the cemetery through her.  You know immediately that this is a ghost story.  A lot of YA books have girls in pretty dressed on the cover, but they normally don't do a good job of actually advertizing the story between the pages.  But this book does.  Except the plant leaves in her hands.  Don't have a clue what those are supposed to mean, but I don't care.  It's still a great cover!

**Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from Around the World ARC Tours in exchange for my honest review.