Ghost? Murder?

        A mysterious murder, a crazy convict, a ghost, visions, slowly going color blind. These are all things that Olivia Tithe experiences in the book Notes from Ghost Town by Kate Ellison. This heartbreaking story is about how the main character whose love was murdered, and her very own mom was convicted for it.
        Olivia or “Liv’s” mom was mentally ill ever since she was a kid. Her mom always talked about how she can see the gray space, the space between life and death.   Liv finally understood what her mom was talking about all these years after she went color blind. " It's happening I'm going crazy like mom."When she kissed stern for the first time, her vision went completely gray, then a few days after that, he dies. Liv has a really hard time coping with the death,  the arrest of her mom, and her vision. On top of all those things, she starts to see the ghost of Stern who is trying to contact her. With everything that’s  going on, she doesn’t think that her mom is so crazy nor guilty anymore.  With her mom’s trial in nine days, she is determined to find out what really happened. Everytime Stern appears he remembers more about what happened and leads her to clues. They go on what seems like a wild goose chase to find proof that her mom isn’t guilty. All of these things they find seem help to prove Olivia's mom innocence, but no one knows for sure if that is true. And her mom is getting increasingly worse, going completely crazy. Is that what Liv was going to end up like? Liv's mental health also started suffering as well. All of these conflicts don’t stop them from trying to prove her mom’s innocence.
        This book has a lot of suspense and mystery to it. However, it can be very confusing at times.  For example, When Liv went color blind in the beginning of the book she started talking about the gray- space without explaining what it was. "I blink several times, but it's still the same- dim gray... I cannot move. The gray space. The place mom told me about."  What is the gray space? Why did her eyesight go dark? As you read the book it leaves you with a lot of unanswered questions. I believe that leaving the reader with some questions while reading is good to keep them interested, but to many un-explained parts can lead to confusion. Also, the transitions were not smooth. When going from day to day, or place to place, most of the time there was no clear indication that you were in a new scene. I had to just assume that Liv was somewhere else based on the context. Overall I thought that the book had a nice plot idea, however, it lacked basic, and important details. I don’t think I would recommend this to any of my friends based on my experience with the book.