"Trying To Live With The Dead" Book Review

Title: Trying To Live With The Dead
Series: The Veil Diaries #1
Author: B.L. Brunnemer
Stars: 3 out of 5
Book Blurb:
Hi, I’m Alexis Delaney. I’m your average 17 year old girl. Except I can see the dead. And talk to the dead. And push them away and, well, help them move on. So..okay, I’m not your average 17 year old girl. For years I’ve been struggling to survive the souls still roaming around. The shitheads always seem to find me. Moving from town to town every few months never helped either. More dead just always find me. But things are changing for me now. I’m moving in with my uncle Rory and cousin Tara. I’m finally going to be able to do normal teenage stuff I’ve been missing out on. Right? 

Well, if this one bitch of a ghost could leave me alone on campus that would be great. Especially since I haven’t told my new friends about my abilities. Can you believe this? Five good looking guys practically adopt me on my first day of school, and I still think they’re a bit nuts for it. Now if I can only just keep my life with the dead from mixing with my normal life everything would be great. Yeah...I don’t see that happening either. But I’m going to give it a shot. Who knows? It might work. 

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I'm a big fan of ghost stories so I was excited to start reading "Trying To Live With The Dead." To be honest, I I read the book a second time before writing this review because I was feeling conflicted and not sure how to rate it. There's a lot of great things about this book but several drawbacks too, which kept me from giving more than 3 stars.

As I mentioned before, this book features ghosts - and not all of them are friendly like Casper. I think Brunnemer does an excellent job describing the ghosts and how Alexis' abilities to see and communicate with the dead work. She actually feels the pain the ghosts feel and see their memories, which is pretty painful and gruesome considering how bad a lot of the ghosts' deaths are. If you're squeamish, then be forewarned that there are a several not-so-pretty descriptions in the story, though none are too horrifying or gross. 

Alexis, who is called Lexie by a lot of the characters (though the guys all have a nickname for her), is a kick-butt girl. She doesn't take crap from anybody and knows how to put bullies in their place. She's a strong character and is also loyal with a big heart, but she's not perfect, which would be unrealistic. She's got her flaws, including a quick temper and major stubbornness. She's had a tough life with her dad dying when she was young and an abusive mom with an alcohol and drug problem, leading her to stay with her Uncle Rory (who is awesome btw). Lexie also curses A LOT; it's not a flaw so much as another warning to readers who might be off-put by strong language. 

The guys are another big part of this story. There's Isaac, the goofball who does MMA fighting, and his twin brother Ethan, who is in a band and has all the ladies texting him constantly. Next, there's Asher with his boy-next-door good looks who plays football but whose real passion is cooking. Zeke is the intimidating guy of the bunch who works at an auto-shop and has his own anger-management issues. Lastly, there's sweet Miles who is super smart but has issues talking with people, especially girls. He's a bit confusing though because despite his social awkwardness he also points out when others are being rude and talks about social cues and dynamics like a psychologist. Each guy is distinct and the relationships among them and between them and Lexie are well-developed. Lexie has a lot of issues with all the ghost stuff going on and the trouble from her past, but the story doesn't just revolve around the guys taking care of her. She helps them just as much and it's nice to see how they all support each other. 

This story is categorized in the Reverse Harem genre (meaning one girl in a relationship with multiple guys), but there's pretty much zero romance in this first book. In fact, the guys are interested in other girls and Lexie finds her own guy who she flirts with. Any affection shown is on the friend level. There's no insta-love here! It's nice to see that the author isn't rushing the romance and is instead building a foundation of friendship and trust first. I'm assuming feelings might start developing in the next book, but we'll see. 

Now that I've gotten through all things to love about this book, I've come to the harder part of talking about the flaws. The story and the characters are amazing, but I wasn't able to enjoy the book fully due to formatting, punctuation, and grammar errors, along with a few other issues. The book (in both Nook and Kindle formats as far as I can tell) isn't formatted very well, mainly in regards to paragraphs. There are some paragraphs, like the very first one that are HUGE chunks of texts while others are chopped up into smaller paragraphs in ways that don't make sense. Dialogue also tends to get lost in bigger paragraphs and I found myself re-reading some lines to figure out who was speaking. There are also a lot of sentences with missing or incorrect punctuation and grammar mistakes like your vs. you're. 

Additionally, I found myself unconvinced by the descriptions of Lexie's injuries and the treatment for her injuries. Lexie arrives at her uncle's house with severe bruising on her back due to dear old mom and the pain is mentioned frequently and icing her back each night for physical therapy comes up as an issue with the guys one night. I bruise easily and have some experience with serious bruises - I was in a dirtbike crash and actually bruised the muscle in my thigh when I flipped over the bike and the handle bar nailed me. I had a limp for several days but by the end of the week I was walking almost normally and the pain was pretty much gone and the color very faded. Bruises normally don't take much time to heal and the pain should fade pretty quickly unless there's a worse issue like a sprain or damage to a muscle or something like that. I don't know who long the delay is between when Lexie got the bruises and she goes to live with her uncle, though it didn't seem like that long, but when I started counting days in the book she was in significant pain for at least three days and after seven days was still icing. Her injuries and the treatment as described weren't realistic and seemed exaggerated solely to create additional tension. 

I found myself concerned too about how much coffee Lexie drinks. A high schooler drinking coffee is not unusual considering a lot of teens and adults drink coffee, and the fact that she doesn't get much sleep because of ghosts. As a person who doesn't drink coffee, I didn't think too much of it at first but I know that too much caffeine can be dangerous so I Googled how much coffee is too much. Turns out there's such a think as overdosing on caffeine and that for most people, you can overdose drinking five cups of coffee in a day, depending on the tolerance to caffeine a person has built up and their BMI. Lexie is described as being small and she frequently has two-three cups a day with extra espresso shots, so even without her other health problems related to ghosts, drinking that much coffee puts her at risk for other serious health issues. Even if she did drink that much, there should be more concern from at least her uncle or her friends about it.

Overall, I really did like reading the story, but I would have enjoyed it more if the aforementioned issues weren't present. The frustrating thing is that they wouldn't have been issues if more editing and research had been done before publishing. I'm definitely going to read the next book and I hope that readers who are interested in the story will still give it a chance despite the flaws.