Dusk or Dawn or Dark or Day by Seanan McGuire

In Dusk or Dawn or Dark or Day, the novel with a long but interesting title, Jenna is a ghost living in New York. She works as a suicide counselor and a barista. Originally from Kentucky, she spends her time helping others in order to take away their time and reduce the amount of time to her dying day, the amount of time before she was meant to die. It’s all a bit confusing, to be honest. When ghosts in New York City begin to disappear, she gets in the middle of a plot involving witches entrapping ghosts, which leads her back to her old home when she had been living.



The story is interesting and well-written. I found Jenna to be a well-developed character. My biggest issue was that there were way too many rules, and I found it hard to follow. Somehow, ghosts have substance and can be among the living and hold jobs (I’m not exactly sure how that makes them ghosts). They have to take time from the living, which means giving them additional time to live? I still don’t fully understand all of the rules, and the bottom line is that it detracted from the story. I think this story would have been better served to not get bogged down with all of this complex system of rules, and tell the story, which often times got lost in the shuffle. The other thing was I thought the climax could have used a bit more punch. It came and went and lacked a big bang that I was hoping for. I don’t want to get too down on the story. There was a lot to like within it, and ultimately I would recommend reading it.