Apparition
2 total works
The last time seventeen-year-old Amelia Mackenzie saw her best friend Matthew alive, he broke her heart. When he is found the next day in an abandoned barn at the edge of town, an apparent suicide, Amelia's whole world comes crashing down.
And then she sees him again. Because Amelia has a secret that even Matthew didn't know: sometimes, she sees ghosts.
When a local history columnist named Morris Dyson contacts Amelia after the funeral and tells her that he thinks the barn Matthew died in is haunted, and that Matthew wasn't its first victim, an unlikely partnership is born. With Amelia's gift for seeing ghosts, Morris's radical theories on the supernatural, and a bit of help from Morris's sexy but skeptical son, Kip, a mystery unfolds. One by one, the barn's other ghostly residents are revealed: all innocent, love-struck young men who've died horrific deaths, seemingly by their own hands.
Life and death couldn't get more complicated as Amelia is torn between her devotion to the ghostly Matthew and her growing attraction to Kip, who may not believe in ghosts but can't help believing in Amelia. When she's confronted with a rivalry between the living and the dead, which side of the great divide will Amelia choose?
Apparition is a fast-paced supernatural mystery about memory and obsession, bodies and spirits, love and loss.
After Amelia's best friend and secret crush Matthew dies in an apparent suicide, Amelia is heartbroken. Adding to her upheaval is the realization that she is firmly in the clutches of Matthew's ghost. Even after the barn in which Matthew had died is burnt to the ground, Matthew's spirit continues to stalk the ruins and Amelia must try to take care of his increasingly restless and reckless ghostly acts.
It's not easy for Amelia to keep Matthew's presence a secret from her two brothers and her grandmother, Joyce. Amelia even tries to keep Matthew's 'survival' from her ghost tracking mentor Morris and his son Kip. But she is harbouring an even bigger secret these days: her deepening feelings for Kip. Unable to reconcile her longing for the flesh-and-blood Kip with her commitment to Matthew's ghost, she's pushed Kip away. Now, he's gone back to school in Chicago, and she can't get him off her mind.
By the time Amelia and Morris are given a new ghost-tracking challenge, Kip has returned to Grey County for spring break, and long buried sparks are beginning to fly. As the trio set out to uncover the mysterious story behind a local inn that seems to harbour a ghost with a guilty conscience, desperate for forgiveness the mystery only deepens. Before long, a stretch of country road nearby reveals a strange history of its own--a series of fatal car accidents involving deer. Is there a connection between the haunted inn and the deadly stretch of road that it's on?
With the rivalry intensifying between Matthew and Kip, Amelia's heart is in more conflict than ever. The ghost Matthew gets ever more comfortable in his phantom skin, which means Kip's headed for trouble, and only Amelia can protect him.