Rating: 4.5 
 Holy Cow! What a sad and gritty story. The sad thing about this book is that I bet a lot of things that happened to Vera in this book happen to teens everywhere. Most of the topics in the book are not for a younger teen audience (underage drinking, drugs, spousal/sexual abuse) therefore I wouldn't recommend it to them. But junior and seniors would be able to handle them. 
 This book sucks you in right at the beginning because they don't give you why and how Charlie died, little bit of a mystery. Even though I am not a fan of flash backs in books, I like how the author titled them so I knew when that happened in relation to the funeral that starts the book. 
 I liked Vera a lot as a character and I thought she was very "real". She had to deal with some of the topics that this book covers at a really young age and that is how it is sometime. Living with just her dad throughout the story I think really affected her both on how she viewed her relationship with her father and also with Charlie. Charlie's ghosts affected her throughout the story and after reading another book that deals with death/dying for a teen, they go through these same kind of feelings with the ghost "talking" with them. After finding out more about the fire and Charlie's death, I felt bad for him. That poor kid went through so much crap in the story that his death didn't really solve things. I hated Jenny, she was cruel and I hate characters that act so mean in the story that I end up hating them. 
 Overall, I think the book asks a very serious question, if you know something serious is going on in someone elses life do you get involved and tell someone about it or do you stay in the shadows and not speak a word to anyone? 
 Also, I loved the cover. It is very plain but very strong at the same time too. I had this laying by my computer at school and I had multiple kids as me about it (of course this was before I started reading it and I had to tell them as me next week).