Tighter by Adele Griffin

Published: June 2012

Publisher: Ember

Pages: 240

Copy Provided by: Library

Summary: Goodreads

Summary:

When 17-year-old Jamie arrives on the idyllic New England island of Little Bly to work as a summer au pair, she is stunned to learn of the horror that precedes her. Seeking the truth surrounding a young couple's tragic deaths, Jamie discovers that she herself looks shockingly like the dead girl—and that she has a disturbing ability to sense the two ghosts. Why is Jamie's connection to the couple so intense? What really happened last summer at Little Bly? As the secrets of the house wrap tighter and tighter around her, Jamie must navigate the increasingly blurred divide between the worlds of the living and the dead. 

Brilliantly plotted, with startling twists, here is a thrilling page-turner from the award-winning Adele Griffin.

Review:

I was expecting a ghost story with lots of mystery and intrigue when I first picked up this title.  Jamie as a character was confused and misguided teen who had become dependent on medication to numb reality.  In her family, she seemed like the "forgotten" child.  Now her parents were shipping her off to a small town to play nanny to a young girl she had never met in a creepy town where everyone knows your business. 

To take the edge off of life, Jamie pilfers her parent's medicine cabinet.  She sneaks a few pills from random bottles and throws them into a baggie to be mixed up and plucked out like jelly beans whenever she needs a fix.  I was a little horrified to see how frequently she popped these unidentified pills.  At any point in time, she never really knew which pill she was popping.  Was it a pain killer? A sleeping pill?  I'm not really up to date with current teen issues but perhaps this would be a good one to address if you were doing a novel study.

All in all, Tighter would make a good ISU title.  There would certainly be lots to analyze.  Adele Griffin is a highly acclaimed author and I did enjoy her writing style.  I would be interested in reading some of her other novels as they are stand-alones (something of a rarity nowadays).  Had Tighter been longer in length, I'm not sure I would have finished it.  I felt compelled to find the answer to this one question - Is Jamie REALLY seeing ghosts or is it all in her imagination?  Read the book and find out!