Review: Trying to Live With the Dead by B.L Brunnemer

Trying to Live With The Dead
By B.L. Brunnemer
My Rating: 4.5 Stars
Publication Date: December 6, 2016
Date Read: January 2018
Kindle Edition, 351 Pages

Summary From Goodreads:

Hi, I’m Alexis Delaney. I’m your average 17-year-old girl. Except I can see the dead. And talk to the dead. And push them away and, well, help them move on. So..okay, I’m not your average 17-year-old girl. For years I’ve been struggling to survive the souls still roaming around. The shitheads always seem to find me. Moving from town to town every few months never helped either. More dead just always find me. But things are changing for me now. I’m moving in with my uncle Rory and cousin Tara. I’m finally going to be able to do normal teenage stuff I’ve been missing out on. Right?

Well, if this one bitch of a ghost could leave me alone on campus that would be great. Especially since I haven’t told my new friends about my abilities. Can you believe this? Five good looking guys practically adopt me on my first day of school, and I still think they’re a bit nuts for it. Now if I can only just keep my life with the dead from mixing with my normal life, everything would be great. Yeah...I don’t see that happening either. But I’m going to give it a shot. Who knows? It might work.

My Review:

So let's just talk about this book for a minute. I found it awhile ago while searching Amazon's Kindle store (which I really need to stay away from because I have about a million other things to be doing {like reading my library books}) and I resisted the urge to buy it for quite awhile (yay me!) but with my weakness for RH books right now, I finally caved and bought the book, because it sounded superb.

And it is.

There's lots of character building, and I love how blunt and no nonsense Alexis is. She's got one heck of a sailor's mouth and she'll tell you exactly what she thinks if you're being stupid. It's actually very refreshing, because you'll always know where you stand with her.

But at the same time, the thing that stops her from seeming like a total B***h, is the fact that she cares. She's been hurt before (big time hurt) and yet, it hasn't hardened her heart. Yeah she's skeptical of the boys and other people at first, because she is trying to save herself the pain of them leaving when things get too real/weird. But she doesn't let that stop her from being protective of others that are being bullied.

I like the guys and their relationship with her. They're obnoxious and protective, and they'll do anything to keep her safe. She also has a really great relationship with her uncle Rory, which I really enjoyed reading. It's hard with some books when the main character is keeping this giant secret from her family and things just go bad at every turn because she has to lie to her family about why weird things happen. So this was a nice change of pace. Everyone is so supportive.

I'm not sure where the book is going as far as romance is concerned. As I am typing this, I am a good part into book 2 and it doesn't look like she's going to "be" with any of her original gang. In fact even though she comments about how good looking they are and what not, there isn't any jealousy on her part or theirs (at least as far as outward appearances go) when the guys are hitting on other girls or dating someone, or vice versa. In fact, one of them set Lexie up with Dylan... But I guess that's okay too, as long as everyone is happy. And since I still have two and a half books to go, who knows what's going to happen.

However, I don't like the way she calls the guys honey and sweetie. That's more of a term of endearment for a little kid or someone you're dating, and it just doesn't sound right when I read it. Also there are some grammatical errors that jumped out at me throughout the story, but it's not enough to make me stop reading it. Also, I really don't like the way she keeps saying sweet. Like, "I said sweetly" or "I asked still using my sweet voice" occasionally that wouldn't bother me, but it's very repetitive. But those are just my opinions and pet peeves, and it probably doesn't bother most people.

Overall, this was a great start to the series, and I can't wait to see what happens next.