kind of super garbage but still pretty fun i just really like cheesy ghost stories ok ( )

A good suspenseful young adult read about ghosts and bullying. Corrine Jacobs and her mom move to her mom's hometown in Ohio from California after Rinn, diagnosed as bipolar, accidentally burns down her grandma's house with her grandma in it and then tries to commit suicide. After making some new friends, strange things begin happening that revolve around the legend of Annaliese Gibbons, a girl who died about 20 years ago. As strange things keep happening and some of her friends die, Rinn has to try and figure out if she's having a relapse or if it's Annaliese.

I enjoyed reading this, even though I had figured most of it out a long time before the end. Basically if you know "Nightmare on Elm Street" (original or 2010 remake) you can figure out what's going on. So maybe it takes Rinn a little too long to deduce what's happening. But otherwise there's nothing to complain about. The writing is very solid and the story entertaining and even if Rinn doesn't figure out what's happening all that quickly she's at least not as whiny and annoying as Bella Swan, so that's always a plus.

That is all. ( )

This review is also posted at The Bawdy Book Blog

The Unquiet will haunt you…long after you’ve turned the last page and long after you think the story is over.

I spook easily, but for some inexplicable reason, I absolutely LOVE ghost stories. Especially the kind that wind their way through your subconscious until you don’t know what’s reality and what’s not anymore. Jeannine Garsee has fabricated the wonderful yet uneasy tale of Rinn Jacobs, a bipolar teenager who moves into the old house of someone who committed suicide and attends a new school where legend has it a girl died. Things happen to people who enter the abandoned pool room, and dead rats are often found in the long tunnel. But no one can explain why…

Let me touch on the bipolar for a minute: a lot of authors and script writers really sensationalize and overplay personality disorders like bipolar for the sake of drama. Garsee doesn’t and it’s so incredibly refreshing. Having lived with two people who are bipolar in the past, I can honestly say she hit the nail on the head. When Rinn had manic episodes, it was perfectly written. The same goes for the downs; nothing was out of step. The roller coaster ride of someone with bipolar disorder, even on meds, was vividly played out page after page, leaving me nearly breathless, because it felt so incredibly real. I don’t think I would have had the same reaction if I didn’t have the personal experience myself. I know I wouldn’t appreciate the authenticity as much.

The story is exceptional. It took me about a third of the way through the book to REALLY get into it, but once I did…I was off and running. It’s as if all these events from the past and the future collided with such ferocity and all the while, I was wondering what the HELL was going on! I wanted to know….I HAD to know what was in the pool room, and why people got hurt, or worse in that school.

Rinn is a great character. Even aside from the BP I mentioned before, she’s realistic and well-grounded. She knows she’s crazy, takes her happy pills and tries to find her happy place. She, like any other person in her situation, has a bit of misguided guilt regarding the circumstances leading to her present situation, but like I said, anyone would probably feel that way. The secondary characters were sometimes hit or miss for me. Lacy was a Super Bitch; I seriously loathed her. I asked myself why Rinn would hang around someone like that and the answer I found was: she’s bipolar, she has low self-esteem and she’s not going to look a gift-horse in the mouth…even if that gift-horse has really foul breath. The other young female characters were not nearly as vivid as Rinn, nor as bitchy as Lacy, so I was generally indifferent to them. Nate was wonderful! I liked him so much because he was so sweet and exactly what Rinn needed in her life.

By the way, I LOVED the relationship between Rinn and her stepfather, Frank. Okay, so I didn’t love it all. Obviously things were tense….after. But there was love there and it reminded me so much of my relationship with my own stepfather, someone who raised me from elementary school until he passed away in my early 20’s. I love to see extended families like this have a real love for each other, regardless whether they are truly blood-related or not. My stepfather treated me like I was his own, and to read a story where a stepdad loves his stepdaughter like mine loved me….well, that just makes me smile. And cry a little. :)

The creepy factor is a slow build but so incredibly worth it. Every moment, every creek and shadow, every tense word getting to that climax was so intense. I had to keep flipping, flipping, flipping the pages, just to find out what happened next. All in all, The Unquiet lives up to its name, leaving an unquiet buzzing in your mind you just can’t quite dispel. ( )

The Unquiet creeped me out! I was not expecting it to be so scary. Honestly, I thought this was a book about mental illness and a girl who thought she saw ghosts, and maybe it is. The ending is unclear. The vague synopsis gave nothing away about how scary this book truly is. If you like scary stories, you'll love this book. If you don't, I'd steer clear of it, if I were you. I had to sleep with my light on after reading it (like a child, haha), and I enjoy horror stories. However, since I wasn't expecting things to be so creepy, I wasn't prepared. I did enjoy this novel, though and would recommend it to those brave souls who read horror novels.

The character development in this novel was a little lacking. I bought into the idea that Rinn was bipolar and that she was not a reliable narrator. However, she wasn't very interesting. I saw memories of the bipolar behavior, and she acted that way when she went off her meds, but I still didn't feel any unstable emotions from her. I felt more like it was getting told to me instead of shown. I think that is because Rinn's details lacked any sensory descriptions. No hearts racing, no shortness of breath, etc. Nothing to make you think she was feeling anything other than normal and just relaying a message. The language could have been much more descriptive in the case of feelings.

I also didn't buy into Rinn's and Nate's relationship 100%. I never felt like they actually fell in love. I mean they made out a lot and they argued a lot. I never saw anything that really screamed "love" to me, though. I felt like that aspect was forced. Again that was probably because of the lack of description when it came to emotions. There was no instalove, but the love itself just wasn't believable.

The horror aspect of the novel was "shown" extremely well, though. I could picture every terrifying thing that Annaliese did. There was one part that literally made my skin crawl. This part of the book was fully-developed and executed nicely. I enjoyed the hints and the mysteries surrounding who Annaliese was going after next. I figured out relatively early on why she was doing what she was doing, but what actually happened to her was more horrific than I ever could have imagined. I would have been mad, too, but I don't think I would have reacted the way she did. But I'm not a ghost... maybe they think differently.

I also enjoyed the fact that people on medications that alter the brain couldn't be affected by the ghosts. That raised the question of did anti-depressants/anti-psychotics/seizure meds/etc. actually balance chemicals in the brain or did it just cut off connection with the ghostly plane, enabling the person to function "normally." In other words, were people with mental illnesses simply more sensitive to ghostly contact? That question was never really answered, and I kind of was annoyed by that. I like definitive answers at the end of my books because otherwise, I'm a bit unsettled. I know that was the effect that Garsee was going for, but still, I don't like to be unsettled. The ending was also almost like a cliffhanger. I'm sure that was done to further the unsettled feeling. I'm not sure if a sequel is planned or not, but if there is one, I'll definitely read it.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to those who love horror novels and are looking for something different. Garsee deals with issues such as bullying and mental illness, but also puts a terrifying, paranormal spin on these issues. This is one book you won't want to miss. ( )

Excellent creepy ghost story with a twist. Having a bipolar main character who must take psychiatric medication is very different from other realistic YA I've read, and then to have the ghost story hinge on whether or not the girl is taking her meds is really really unique! Rinn is not only bipolar, she suffers from being the New Girl in school, she misses her stepfather whom she and her mom left behind in their move to Ohio, she misses her recently deceased grandmother, and: she's living in a house where a woman hanged herself--in the very room Rinn claims as her bedroom! Add to that the creepy goings-on at school, where Rinn begins to suspect that the ghost of a long-dead student is haunting her new friends, turning their personalities totally haywire, and you have some serious stress on our girl. And I couldn't put this book down! ( )