Absent by Katie Williams

Forever is a long time to be stuck in high school.
Seventeen-year-old Paige is dead, the victim of a freak fall from the roof during Physics class. Now she’s a ghost, permanently bound to the grounds of her high school. It isn’t all bad, she can find out everyone’s secrets, which can be amusing—for a while.
But then Paige hears something that isn’t amusing at all: the rumor spread by the most popular girl at school that her death wasn’t an accident—that she supposedly jumped on purpose.
Paige is desperate to stop the gossip, but what can a ghost do?
Then Paige discovers something amazing. She can possess
living people when they think of her, and she can make them do
almost anything. Maybe, just maybe, she can get inside the girl
who’s responsible for the stories. . . and have a little fun turning the tables while she’s at it.
Katie Williams’s second novel is a suspenseful page-turner full of eerie wit and a touch of the otherworldly

Before picking it up, I hadn’t really heard anything about Absent. Someone at the local indie bookshop gave me their ARC and told me it was really good. So when I started reading, that was all I really heard about Absent (but that’s probably because I read the book and am writing the review a few months before it’s being posted.) Absent was really original, and is a book that I wish I would have seen in the YA world earlier.

I loved Paige. Her voice was great, and I loved how real she was. It’s hard for me to say that she got annoying at times because what she was going through was huge. But I did find her annoying at times. It’s short book but I feel like her voice made Absent seem way longer (in a bad way). That’s really my only complaint about the book, though.

Williams surprised me at the end, and caught me totally off guard- I could never have guessed what was going on. Overall, I really liked Absent. I read it in a day, and honestly enjoyed reading it. I haven’t read Katie Williams first book, but after reading Absent, I really want to go check it out.

FTC- Received as an ARC from an indie bookshop.