Spookygirl: Paranormal Investigator sounded promising, but didn't live up to my expectations. I'm usually a big fan of ghost talkers and this just didn't do it for me, plotwise or characterwise. It seemed like the author had trouble deciding which haunting plot she wanted to make the main storyline and there was a lot of clunky exposition to deal with. I also don't think it was ever explained why Violet, who can see, talk to and sense ghosts, needed to use ghost hunting equipment to, you know, verify that ghosts were at a location or what sort of haunting it was. It seemed particularly redundant since Violet herself is essentially a piece of ghost detecting equipment. Baguchinsky's universe's rules about the ghosts and the afterlife were ill-defined and particularly convenient for all the characters too.

I also wasn't a big fan of Violet, who was incredibly judgmental about everyone, even her friends. For all these "outcast" characters who complain about the evil popular jocks stereotyping them, they sure do a lot of stereotyping and judging themselves. YA authors, if you're going to go with the typical douchebag jocks and cheerleaders as your character's main schoolyard antagonists, actually make them jerks and don't just say they are because they were a letter jacket. I mean, calling the popular people "the void" because they're all so stupid? Hur-dur, how original. Violet mentions she catches the jocks shoving Tim into lockers as evidence of their douchebaggery, but then she plots to and does successfully injure someone in gym class so she can go investigate some ghosts. Plus there was the d-bag move when she erased Emerson Bean's name on a list because it sounded nerdy and stuck-up because oh my god, she just hates gym soooooo much and her pain at having to exercise is more important than whatever dumb reason Emerson put his name on the list first OKAY. Hypocritical much, Violet?

I really did like that Spookygirl had absolutely zero romantic interests for Violet and that there was no love triangle in sight. That was completely refreshing for a paranormal YA novel. I loved every second of having a book actually focus on paranormal stuff instead of having it as the backdrop for a ridiculous romance. The haunting at the end of the book was sufficiently creepy and there was some great suspense build up there. I think Jill Baguchinksy has some potential to grow as an author, once some of the obvious first book errors and style issues get cleaned up and edited out.