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Liv Bloom gets the opportunity of a lifetime when her art portfolio earns her a full scholarship to the elite and exclusive prep school Wickham Hall located in rural New England. For a girl who spent most of her youth bouncing around the foster care system on the west coast, to call this a culture shock is quite the understatement. While the school fulfills every stereotype one might expect from such an elite institution - secret societies, legacy students, and snobbish attitudes towards scholarship students like Liv, it proves to be a fairly benign ground for her and she mostly is able to avoid the 'mean girls' who often terrorize students like Liv in stories of this sort.
Before long, Liv starts a budding romance with Malcolm Astor, the most popular guy on campus and part of a long line of prominent Wickham alums who belong to a secret society that appears to controls the school and befriends fellow work-study student Gabe Nichols, whose eccentricities and penchant for conspiracy theories make him perhaps the biggest outcast in the entire school. While leaving their work-study job together, Gabe becomes startled and causes Liv to get in trouble by dropping and breaking a school laptop. While getting a stern warning at her new school is bad enough, it is not quite as troubling as Gabe's revelation that what startled him was the presence of a bloody ghost in the stairway. Liv had heard about Wickham's supposedly haunted history, but simply filed away those stories as part of the mythology that any school like Wickham develops over time.
Liv's skepticism is short-lived During a secret rendezvous with Malcolm in the middle of night, she is attacked by an unknown figure. When she comes back to consciousness, she rushes back to her dorm only to find that seemingly no one can see or hear her – she reaches the inevitable conclusion: she is now a ghost. While Malcolm is heart-broken and guilt-ridden over Liv's death, his powerful family and the elite secret society that he is a prominent member of are busy removing any trace of his involvement with Liv to avoid any stain on the family's name. To her relief, Liv finds that Gabe is able to see and communicate with her and they hatch a plan to find out what happened to her and just exactly who these other ghosts are that are hanging around the school grounds. Gabe and Malcolm have a healthy distaste for one another; but eventually Gabe is able to convince him of Liv's continued presence and they all agree to work together to figure out not only find out what happened to Liv, but also to the other girls-turned-ghosts who met violent ends at Wickham.
At this point, the novel shifts from paranormal boarding school romance to a smart and emotionally affecting detective story. Where many novels of this type have their protagonists uncover deep secrets and conspiracies almost by accident as they run away from the villains, Liv and her companions research the circumstances of the mysterious deaths of the other ghosts thoroughly and reach their conclusions in an informed way. Since even many books with adult protagonists solve their mysteries almost by serendipity and dumb luck, it is refreshing to see LIV, FOREVER take a smarter tack.
LIV, FOREVER is a debut novel by screenwriter Amy Talkington and was initially conceived as a screenplay, and it's easy to see where her cinematic eye influences the novel. The arc of the novel is both swift and concise; needless subplots do not invade the central story and all of the characters seem genuine. Rarely does a chapter end without the reader being excited about the next one. While nearly all of the characters align with certain character archetypes, they still manage to feel distinctive and show real personality. Young adults will appreciate that the characters are not dumbed down and are allowed to inhabit their own skins, while adults will appreciate the smart pop culture references and depth of the proceedings. By the end of the novel, the reader is sad to see Liv and her friends go. This is a must-read for anyone looking for a smart paranormal thriller with emotional depth.
§ Ben Neal is a librarian who likes to fancy himself an amateur writer, humorist, detective, and coffee connoisseur in his spare time. He can be reached at beneneal@indiana.edu.
Reviewed by Ben Neal, March 2014
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