Main Characters: Alexis, Kasey, Megan, Carter, Sarah

Summary:

Alexis thought she led a typically dysfunctional high school existence. Dysfunctional like her parents’ marriage; her doll-crazy twelve-year-old sister, Kasey; and even her own anti-social, anti-cheerleader attitude.

When a family fight results in some tearful sisterly bonding, Alexis realizes that her life is creeping from dysfunction into danger. Kasey is acting stranger than ever: her blue eyes go green sometimes; she uses old-fashioned language; and she even loses track of chunks of time, claiming to know nothing about her strange behavior. Their old house is changing, too. Doors open and close by themselves; water boils on the unlit stove; and an unplugged air conditioner turns the house cold enough to see their breath in.

Alexis wants to think that it’s all in her head, but soon, what she liked to think of as silly parlor tricks are becoming life-threatening–to her, her family, and to her budding relationship with the class president. Alexis knows she’s the only person who can stop Kasey — but what if that green-eyed girl isn’t even Kasey anymore?

Anna’s Thoughts:

This. Book. Was. Perfect.

I am a big ghost story fan, be it books, short stories, t.v. shows, etc – I’ll read/watch it. (Oddly though I’m not a fan of the movie Ghost.. hmm.) I’ve been this way since I was a kid, always hunting out good ghost stories, wanting to visit ‘haunted’ places, and you know what? Out of all of those stories I’ve read/seen/heard, this book takes the cake. And the trophy, ribbon, the red Corvette, and anything else you’d ever dream of giving a ‘winner’. The reason why? I managed to read this book in all of two sittings, I fought off sleep for hours to finish this book. Usually it takes me 3-4 days to read a book, and unless I LOVE it, it’s usually read a few times before I sleep and maybe once or twice throughout the day. I started this book yesterday around noon, and I got just about half way through it. I woke up this morning at 4AM, and I swear when I saw it sitting on my desk next to my bed, I had to fight against picking it up just to go get something to drink. Katie also managed to scare me. Me. The person who ONLY gets scared when someone teases her that there is a miniature red-headed doll with a knife hiding in her closet. Go figure, I’d pick up a book with dolls in it.

Bad Girls Don’t Die is a fast paced, exciting and enticing story. I was sitting on the edge of my seat (you know, assuming I was in a seat) through the entire thing wondering, What’s going to happen next? Why is Kasey acting weird? Etc. (There are many more questions, but they’d give the story away.) I couldn’t turn the page fast enough to find out what would happen next. There was not a slow, or dull moment throughout the entire book, never a moment I thought to myself: Well, I could have lived without knowing that. Even the beginning, where most books lack interest in favor of learning about the character, was fantastic.

The characters were all their own, the plot was, somewhat, cliche, but Katie wrote it in a way that completely made it new. It was vivid, and descriptive, and most of all it was a classic ghost story – something that is becoming rare nowadays. I fell in love with all of the characters, not just one or two of them. Alexis, Kasey, Megan, Carter, even Sarah. And the bad guy? Was creepy as hell. I hope to whatever powers there are that even though this doesn’t end like there should be a sequel with these characters, that there is. That the next book will be about these same four people.

In short: There isn’t one thing I would have changed about this book, not one single word.