Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
Start by marking “Cemetery Songs” as Want to Read:
Cemetery Songs
by
Poignant and uplifting, Cemetery Songs is a compelling YA about a girl, a ghost, and the graveyard that sends them both on a journey of self-acceptance.
When Polly Stone’s birthmother dies, she feels lost and adrift. How do you mourn someone you never knew? Even the dead, whose final thoughts Polly can hear, offer no advice.
Instead Polly fails her classes, alienates her fr ...more
When Polly Stone’s birthmother dies, she feels lost and adrift. How do you mourn someone you never knew? Even the dead, whose final thoughts Polly can hear, offer no advice.
Instead Polly fails her classes, alienates her fr ...more
269 pages
Published
December 15th 2020
by Lakestone Press
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Reader Q&A
To ask other readers questions about
Cemetery Songs,
please sign up.
Be the first to ask a question about Cemetery Songs
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
Showing 1-40

Start your review of Cemetery Songs

Apollonia (Polly) Stone is a 17 year old high school jr, an adopted child, grounded until the summer is over, lifeguard and works in the archives, oh yeah she is also a Death Singer.
Death singers hear the last thoughts or words a person has before they die. Someone knows this and is blackmailing her because they have more then one secret that she doesn't want getting out.
It is doing work mapping at an old graveyard that she stumbles upon a ghost who not only does she hear sing their last thought ...more
Death singers hear the last thoughts or words a person has before they die. Someone knows this and is blackmailing her because they have more then one secret that she doesn't want getting out.
It is doing work mapping at an old graveyard that she stumbles upon a ghost who not only does she hear sing their last thought ...more


ARC provided by Julie Gilbert via Xpresso Book Tours. All opinions are mine and freely given.
Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | BookBub
12-19: 'Cemetery Songs' by Julie Gilbert is the story of Apollonia Stone.. a girl who can hear the final thoughts of the dead. Struggling with her circumstances, a biracial teenager adopted into a transracial family who lives in one of those small towns with minimal diversity, her path to self-acceptance is littered with challenges.
When she finds out her bir ...more

Polly Stone has been able to hear the dead talk ever since she was a little girl. She learned at a young age to keep her ability a secret from everyone as they would not understand. Yeah, I imagine if you went around telling people that you could hear the dead talk then they would want to lock you up and throw away the key.
One day Polly sees and hears a dead guy talking to her. Polly learns all about this guy's life and about the mystery surrounding his death. Polly decides to help this guy, Har ...more
One day Polly sees and hears a dead guy talking to her. Polly learns all about this guy's life and about the mystery surrounding his death. Polly decides to help this guy, Har ...more

4 Cranky Stars

Over the years, things don’t really change much. Being different in so many ways is hard and challenging for a person. This book was interesting from beginning to end. For me, it hits home, not for the same exact reasons it did for the author but similar.

Polly is the main character who has struggles for different reasons from the beginning, since she was small. Even as she is older now, she still struggles with her differences. Some differences can cause others to exploit you in w ...more

Over the years, things don’t really change much. Being different in so many ways is hard and challenging for a person. This book was interesting from beginning to end. For me, it hits home, not for the same exact reasons it did for the author but similar.

Polly is the main character who has struggles for different reasons from the beginning, since she was small. Even as she is older now, she still struggles with her differences. Some differences can cause others to exploit you in w ...more

You read the blurb, so I’ll get straight to the review. First off, I loved the character of Apolonia aka Polly. She’s at a point in her life where she’s confused, angry, and full of grief after losing her birth mother, and growing up in a Caucasian community with Caucasian adoptive parents.
In some ways, I found myself thinking of the late Richard Wagamese’s For Joshua, because he was a Sixties Scoop child, and was also full of the same feelings growing up far away from the Anishinaabeg, his peop ...more
In some ways, I found myself thinking of the late Richard Wagamese’s For Joshua, because he was a Sixties Scoop child, and was also full of the same feelings growing up far away from the Anishinaabeg, his peop ...more

I was really intrigued by the the summary of "Cemetery Songs", and after reading it, the idea of a girl who can hear the last thoughts of the dead is still enticing. The book started off a bit slow, but once I got into it, it was hard to put down. There are strong topics relevant in today's world, as Polly deals with being a biracial girl in a mostly white community, though I feel at times the author relied on the reader to understand her character's strong emotions a little too much. The emotio
...more

This book deals with a lot important topics and real, everyday world problems. It was a nice read because I learned more about issues I had minimum knowledge about. It definitely gave me some insight to problems that have been real and persistent in our world. It was interesting to see how a young teenager perceives such matters while trying to find more about her birth-mother.
Polly's gift is an excellent touch of magic in the story, great addition from the author!
Harrisons background and the ...more
Polly's gift is an excellent touch of magic in the story, great addition from the author!
Harrisons background and the ...more
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Although Julie Gilbert’s masterpiece, The Adventures of Kitty Bob: Alien Warlord Cat, has sadly been out of print since Julie last stapled it together in the fourth grade, she continues to write.
Julie is the author of Cemetery Songs, a young adult novel about adoption, identity and the ghosts of the past. She has written several books for Capstone/Stone Arch Books, including the Dark Waters series ...more
Julie is the author of Cemetery Songs, a young adult novel about adoption, identity and the ghosts of the past. She has written several books for Capstone/Stone Arch Books, including the Dark Waters series ...more
Related Articles
Melissa Albert burst onto the YA scene (and catapulted into readers' hearts) with her 2018 debut The Hazel Wood. This darkly fantastical...
32 likes · 0 comments
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »