“‘I’m telling you, it’s a ghost.’ Angie twirled around her bedroom, arms splayed wide as if to scoop up the paranormal energy like a sail, brown hair swishing around her face. ‘Can’t you feel it?’” In Lauren Thoman’s new mystery, You Shouldn’t Be Here, 16-year-old Angie Stewart is living with her contractor dad in East Henderson, Pennsylvania, when she begins to hear a woman singing in the shower inside their modest home. But no one is there.
Even her best friend, Bas, is skeptical of her insistence that someone is haunting her; Angie’s mom leaving the family two years before was hard on his friend, and he wonders about her mental health. But Angie knows what she heard, has a brand-new Ouija board, and won’t stop investigating until she uncovers the truth about her “ghost.”
In the novel’s second storyline, Madelyn Zhao, a recent graduate of Penn State, accepts a position as chorus director at East Henderson Middle School. On her first day, she is practically swept off her feet by the handsome language arts teacher, Alex Garcia. But Madelyn can’t afford to get distracted from her main reason for relocating. She is worried about her cousin, Piper Carden, who has vanished. She and Piper had only recently connected with each other, thanks to genetic testing, before Piper suddenly stopped responding to her messages. Madelyn is still eager to get to know her new family member, so she hopes to poke around town, talk to people who knew Piper, and discover the reason for her disappearance.
When Madelyn rents a house from local real estate mogul Doug Raymond, who happens to be Piper’s former employer, she begins to get a bad feeling about the narcissistic businessman and his relentless drive toward success. He’s definitely not going to like it when he finds out her dog, Potato, has been obsessively scratching at one of the walls inside the house. Raymond doesn’t even know she has a dog, much less one hell-bent on destroying his property. And after her new friend, Nat, and Piper’s former co-worker, Kelsey, warn her to be careful lest she uncover a hornet’s nest, she begins to worry about her own safety. Thoman writes, “Madelyn found herself sizing up the people around her. Was that woman really taking a selfie, or was she filming Madelyn? Was that man looking at her too much? Was that guy really stopping to tie his shoe, or was he trying to eavesdrop? Everyone looked like a spy. Everything felt like a threat.” Unsure whom to trust, Madelyn nevertheless is determined to find her cousin, no matter the risk.
Fans of Thoman’s debut novel and Mindy’s Book Studio pick, I’ll Stop the World, will likely enjoy this eerie new offering, equal parts ghost story and crime thriller. As the stories of Angie and Madelyn progress and intertwine, their searches lead them to disturbing answers and, surprisingly, to each other. Will their sleuthing reveal the truth, or will it put them both in danger? Thoman imbues the novel with humor, romance, suspense, and shocking reveals. You Shouldn’t Be Here will keep readers guessing, as Thoman provides plenty of puzzling twists and turns, until the last mystery is solved.
Tina Chambers has worked as a technical editor at an engineering firm and as an editorial assistant at Peachtree Publishers, where she worked on books by Erskine Caldwell, Will Campbell, and Ferrol Sams, to name a few. She lives in Chattanooga.
Tagged: 2024 Southern Festival of Books, Book Reviews, Fiction
