The Ghosts of Ashbury High

Starred review from June 28, 2010
Returning to the setting and characters of her earlier Ashbury High books, Moriarty offers a mosaic composed largely of students' gothic fiction exams, as they write about their final year of school as a ghost story. Enigmatic Riley and Amelia, a beautiful couple on scholarship, are embroiled in many of the narratives. But like a game of telephone, the conjectural haunting changes as interpreted through each student. The students delight, to varying degrees, in playing with the tropes of gothic literature, lending the story an often wicked sense of humor, creating modern and effective ghost stories in the process. "The more I followed Riley and Amelia, the less I knew of they. Who were they? Whenceforward had they come? Why? Why not?" reads a typically breathless passage from Emily (from The Year of Secret Assignments), who returns along with other characters. Fans of the previous books will enjoy clever references to past events, but this book more than stands on its own, as the students' chorus creates a compelling collective portrait of adolescence—the limbo between childhood and the shadowed future. Ages 12–up.

September 1, 2010

Gr 8 Up-This Australian author adds another volume to her sequence of novels centered around a private high school. When two mysterious new scholarship students begin their senior year at Ashbury High, suspicions arise. Amelia and Riley are clearly a couple with an unknown past, and Emily Thompson is determined to find out their secrets. Em is also convinced that there is a ghost haunting Ashbury, and with the (sometimes) help of her friends Lydia and Cassie, she makes the new couple and the ghost her projects for the year. Told in multiple voices through essays written by the students for their senior exam on gothic literature, emails, blog entries, and scholarship-committee meeting notes, the plot moves slowly with numerous side stories woven throughout. They all add up to tell several interconnected stories from a variety of perspectives in an imaginative manner. There is an air of mystery as readers wonder if there really is a ghost and exactly what Riley's and Amelia's past secrets are, but, overall, the suspense doesn't carry the story. Inclusions of humorous gothic elements throughout are pluses along with the ideas of giving second chances and leaving one's past behind. Readers expecting a spine-tingling tale of ghosts and intrigue are likely to be disappointed; this is more of an examination of high school friendships and social life. Those willing to stick with the sometimes slow-moving narrative will be satisfied in the end.-Gina Bowling, South Gibson County High School, Medina, TN

Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2010
Grades 8-12 Australian author Moriarty follows The Year of Secret Assignments (2004), a Booklist Editors Choice selection, and The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie (2006) with another madcap novel set at exclusive Ashbury High in Sydney. Best friends Emily, Cassie, and Lydia return to recount their dramatic senior year, when the entire student body becomes obsessed with two mysterious scholarship students. Once again, Moriarty tells her story in a clever jumble of forms and voices, including faculty-meeting minutes; IMs, e-mails, and blog entries; and students essays on gothic literature, a genre that is hilariously referenced throughout the story, right down to a madwoman in an attic. This feels both more ambitious and more crowded than the previous Ashbury novels; some plotlines, particularly one that suggests time travel, feel roughly integrated. The off-the-rails zaniness, though, is just as satisfying, and in between all the irreverence, Moriarty slips in plenty of sharp-eyed, poignant observations about first impressions and second chances, class prejudice, parental foolishness, and the ache and thrill of leaving high school behind.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)