** spoiler alert ** This book was a good story, on the face of it, as long as you don't look too closely. Lupton is really good at getting across emotions, especially love, and the book is really touching as a result.

But as I said, you can't look too closely. Too many characters are under-developed and when you find out who the arsonist is you are supposed to just accept that she is a totally different person to the one originally portrayed, without any convincing explanation. This made me feel cheated, in a similar way to when I finished Lupton's first novel "Sister", which was a superior effort (but things were also incorrect in that as well).

I could deal with the "out of body" experience in itself, but there was no detail explaining why or how it was happening. Like: Why can't they see other spirits of comatose people? It is a hospital after all. How do they get inside cars? No one's holding the door open so do they pass through objects? If so why do they need to wait for lifts? Why does it hurt so much when they go outside?

On top of these things was the totally obvious lack of research which really infuriated me. So many things were just plain wrong in this novel, which would have been apparent to Lupton had she done a bit of research or even a few Google searches.

For example:

1) The age of criminal responsibility is 10. Therefore and eight-year-old can't be cautioned for arson. The police talking about deciding not to press charges because Adam had "suffered enough" is just a nonsense. The school also "decides" not to press charges, which makes no sense.
2) A local newspaper hints than Mr Hyman pushed a kid out a window, and the same newspaper implies he started the fire at the school. He had nothing to do with either event and a local paper simply would not imply such things without getting sued for libel, they are incredibly cautious because they can't afford not to be. National tabloids may be more risque but not to this extent, it's total nonsense.
3) Tara is apparently a local reporter, but she also decides where things go in the newspaper, what the headlines are and deals with a police officer who comes to the office to ask questions. She is therefore also the paper's editor, sub-editor and news editor.

There are so many more things that continued to rile me throughout that just showed Lupton could not be bothered to look into what she was writing about. She decided instead to work off stereotypes of police officers, journalists, teenagers etc.

She has obvious talent as a writer but these factual errors kept punching me in the face throughout and it just wound me up that she didn't put a bit of effort into making the story at least seem authentic.