Review: On the Day I Died by Candace Fleming

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• Publisher: Random House Children's Books
• Publication date: 7/10/2012
• Pages: 208
• Source: eARC from NetGalley/Random House for review

Purchase: Amazon | B&N | The Book Depository

Overview

The phenomenally versatile, award-winning author, Candace Fleming, gives teen and older tween readers ten ghost stories sure to send chills up their spines. Set in White Cemetery, an actual graveyard outside Chicago, each story takes place during a different time period from the 1860's to the present, and ends with the narrator's death. Some teens die heroically, others ironically, but all due to supernatural causes. Readers will meet walking corpses and witness demonic posession, all against the backdrop of Chicago's rich history—the Great Depression, the World's Fair, Al Capone and his fellow gangsters.


My Thoughts

This was a great collection of stories of how each of these characters died. I liked how it was set up though. It wasn't like a typical anthology would be with just having the short stories in it. The short stories are being told to Mike who stumbles into this cemetery due to an event that happens. Each ghost is telling the story of the day that they died. After each story we are brought back to the present where Mike and some of the ghosts say a few things about the story they just heard before the next ghost tells their story. All of these ghosts died when they were teenagers, all around Mikes age. They all need to tell their stories. I am not going to go into each one, I will just give you an idea of what each story is about.

The book starts off with Mike, who is the narrator. He is on his way home, but something unexpected happens which brings him to the graveyard. It is there that the stories begin. We first get to hear Gina's story, she was fifteen when she died. This was a story about a psycho kid really. The next story is about Johnnie, who insists that he got revenge and revenge got him. He was sixteen when he died. He lived during The Depression. He was a trouble maker, and in the end he feels like he got what he deserved. We move onto Scott after that who was seventeen when he died. His is a creepy ghost story from an insane asylum. Then David tells his story. He was fifteen when he died. This was a pretty crazy story to be quite honest. Evelyn, who was sixteen when she died is up next. Her story is about her and her twin sister who she absolutely hated. Lily's story is one about love and loss. Also evil magic. She was seventeen when she died. Rich was sixteen when he died. His is a story of evil possession. Edgars story is a bit odd, but creepy. He died when he was seventeen. And then there was Tracy who died when she was fifteen. This girl had a pretty rough life and it gets much more rough and scary weird on the day she dies.

So I know that all of that didn't really tell you much. What is really cool is that each of the stories have some actual history behind them from the time period that it is from. At the end of the book the author so nicely puts each person and where their story came from. I really love how she details each story. It's interesting to get to know some of the real history of the events and the places. It seems like she really looked into the time periods to get the settings, fashions, and decorations correct. You can really imagine these characters in the specific time they are supposed to be from.

This was a fast and entertaining read. The stories had magic, love, revenge, evil, and ghosts. They were all such different and creative stories about how these teenagers lives ended. In the end they need someone to listen to them tell it. Evey one of them needs their death tale heard. This was very well written and you really feel like you are listening to each of these people tell you how they died. (There will be an audiobook version of it which I would love to listen to.) There is plenty of creepiness and action in this book, and it doesn't read like an anthology. The stories are within a story and it works really well. It's almost like a bunch of teenagers hanging out with each other telling ghost stories. If you like ghost stories this is a fun book. It's not scary, but some of it is a bit on the creepy and weird side. It was just a mindless read, which you really need sometimes. 3.5 out of 5 stars.