The Taking Of Jake Livingston

The Taking Of Jake Livingston

YA chiller
"'What...the...fuck?' Benji is confused too.
'You see it too?'
This is not some dead object bleeding into my reality--this
writing is really here. Someone wrote their initials in blood in my
house. And they meant us to find it."
Although a few of the books I've reviewed recently for our
Halloween gala have touched on spectral presences, you're probably
wondering when I'll introduce you to an out and out ghost tale. Well
have I got one for you! In The Taking Of Jake Livingston Ryan Douglas
brings us to a dimension few of us would dare inhabit.
Commuting between his low income neighborhood and his rich,
snobby, majority white prep school is not the only sense in which Jake
inhabits two worlds. As a medium he has one foot in the world of the
living and the other in the world of the not still living. He
routinely sees ghosts reliving their death loops. Ghouls slink around
the neighborhood and perch in yards like grotesque garden gnomes.
Ectopic-mist drifts like morning fog.
But things are about to get very ugly. The blood initials are
those of Sawyer Doon, a boy who took his life after shooting up his
school. Somehow, in spectral form, he's able to continue his killing
spree. And he seems obsessed with getting Jake.
Before he became a vengeful spirit Sawyer was a little boy
tormented by those he should have been able to trust. His journal
entries are scattered through the narrative. Which means that the
book is pretty darn scary on more than one dimension.
Read it if you dare.
On a purrrsonal note, I had a good weekend. I spent a lot of it
writing. I even penned an op ed piece to submit to the Bangor Daily
News. At that point I told myself to stop writing. Writing is good.
But I can't let it take over too much of my life. Then I remembered
how much my kids like the scrapbooks I've made so far from the familiy
photos in boxes. I had lots more pictures and a really nice scrapbook
from Goodwill. So I just plunged in. It was so much fun reliving
memories and creating a thing of beauty. When the family got together
for the afternoon Sunday it was quite a hit. It was so wonderful
being with my kids!!! Katie baked a gorgeous birthday pie that was
every bit as good as it looked! (Jules)
Pie? Cake? I think birthday tuna with a little birthday nip on the
side is the way to celebrate. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to our wonderful family.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway


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