Scarlett Dedd is a YA humorous ghost story by Cathy Brett.
Scarlett wanted to get out of a school trip – and she knew her parents wouldn’t buy a fake illness.
So, what’d she do? Well, she picked some mushrooms that a schoolbook said would make her mildly sick and made a dish out of them.
She missed the fact that very similar mushrooms cause death. Of course, those were the ones she actually picked.
Oops.
While being violently ill in the bathroom, her Mom, Dad, and brother all decided to try the meal Scarlett made.
Double oops.
So, now Scarlett is absolutely mortified that she not only accidentally killed herself – but her entire family!!!
As a ghost, she finds that it may be sorta fun to haunt the place. She was a goth horror-movie fanatic, after all.
But it doesn’t take long to get bored and miss her relatively recent best friends and crush. So, Scarlett begins to wonder how she could make her afterlife more exciting…
Scarlett Dedd is filled with illustrations from the author herself. What I really liked about that is that the drawings matched the descriptions – you don’t always get that when someone other than the author does it.
I’m sad to say, though, that Scarlett Dedd did not tickle my fancy.
Do I appreciate dark humor? Yes. Do I like eccentric stories? Absolutely yes. Did I like Scarlett Dedd? Unfortunately, no.
For me, Scarlett Dedd was just a little too much. Scarlett really wasn’t all that likable to me. Her friends didn’t seem to care she was dead, except for one, which made me actually dislike them. I know that the story isn’t supposed to be taken all that seriously, but it was hard to get past the overall annoyance I had with this.
Then, the story itself just didn’t come across as all that interesting to me. We essentially learn how Scarlett died, watch her realize she’s dead, and then deal with it. I didn’t find it particularly funny or poignant in any way. The illustrations and wavy/spiraling text didn’t help enough to make it less flat.
You might completely disagree. I hope you do!
But for me, I prefer the Ghostgirl books from Tonya Hurley. They were dark but funny, with a plot that centered on her finding herself – not to mention an interesting world of dead people, and dead school!
So, I hate to say it, but Scarlett Dedd did not come alive for me.
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