City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab
Hello Books Lovers,
City of Ghosts has officially become one of my favorite books of 2021. I haven’t read something like this in a while. Although, both in the summer and at the beginning of the year, I had read many interesting books, it was from The Inheritance Games that a reading did not enchant me so. I spent two days unable to detach myself from the story of Cassidy and Jacob.
City of Ghosts is a middle-grade, yet it is perfect for all ages and has all the elements that make a book crazy. Friendship, adventure, magical places, like Edinburgh, and ghosts. Because yes, Cassidy Black is really able to see ghosts, since she nearly died a year ago and her best friend, Jacob, who died of unknown causes, saved her life.
Since then she has always had one foot among the living and one among the dead, and the irony is that her parents are co-authors of a best-selling book saga about ghosts. And it is following the fame of their books that they are called to make a TV series in mystical, haunted cities. A ghost docuseries. Cassidy is forced to say goodbye to her summer in New York, in a house without disturbances, to arrive in a city that is teeming with the entities that only she can see.
But you may be wondering why Jacob, a ghost, is her best friend? Cassidy is the classic invisible girl, who always remains isolated, and perhaps talking with a ghost doesn’t help. Having Jacob close to her lights up the day, and together with him they visit the Veil, a kingdom where there are only ghosts and only she can enter, together with her camera, with the hope, one day, of being able to have a decent shot.
The real adventure begins in Edinburgh, where she meets another person like her. She explains to her that the reason they are able to cross the veil is because they have to help the ghosts get through. They are kept in this in-between world because they can’t get any further, and the role of people like Cassidy is to help them. But there are no ordinary ghosts in Edinburgh. There is a dangerous one, with evil purposes, and it will be up to our protagonists to defeat it.
The writing was so fluid that the pages flowed by the dozen without even realizing it. Then it must also be taken into account that in this economic version of the Oscar Vault the words are large, and this has contributed even more to making the reading fast. At the end of this book I was left curious about what might happen next. Cassidy and Jacob will be in Paris and I can’t wait. We only have to wait a month. This is my second Schwab book, but the style was totally different from Eddie La Rue, in my opinion this Middle-grade trilogy is much nicer.
As I told you before, the tones of friendship are very strong. Our protagonists have a list of rules to respect so that their friendship remains intact. They watch each other’s backs, and if one isn’t around, the other worries. And then there is the adventure throughout Edinburgh, from the castle, to the parks, to the cemetery. This book literally has it all.
