A Certain Slant of Light centers on Helen, a 130 year old spirit with no memory of her life who goes from host to host with nothing exciting occuring. That is, until a young man in her current host's English class can see her. Soon Helen is going through a whirlwind of love, risks, life, and death. 
 My overall impression of this book was "Whoa, that's intense", that is, when I wasn't going "So wait, where's this going?". I really enjoyed Whitcombs's prose, especially in capturing the voice of a woman from a different time. Many parts of the novel had a lovely poeticness to it, my favourites were in moments when Helen was recalling her life and her death - some of these were absolutely heartwrenching. 
 I myself wouldn't classify this as a YA novel; the emotions are incredibly mature, the main characters are not really youth, and the romance of it is enacted quite differently from the usual YA expectation. That was something I also enjoyed; I found myself unable to fully predict what was going to happen next and how everything was going to end up. 
 In the end, I'm in love with Helen's words. The plot was intriguing and suspenseful, the characterization was well done and created fleshed out characters, and the writing was beautiful.