Stacey Kade

I have been putting off reading this series, hoping to wait until the 3rd book was out so that I didn't have to wait. After seeing the cover sitting there for months, I just couldn't put it off any longer.

The story starts off with Alona ( love the name) leaving school while talking on her cell phone, while it seems like she may be talking to a friend's voice-mail or answering machine; we don't actually find out who is until the end of the book. Alona steps out into traffic with out noticing it and ends up being hit and killed. We are then taken back through Alona's thoughts, we see her dad come identify her body and we hear about her funeral.
Alona then decides to go to school. While there she learns that things weren't as they seemed in her perfect world. Not everyone in her inner circle is really sad to see her gone and to top it all off, her best friend and boyfriend are hooking up and apparently have been for a little while now. Alona rightfully gets mad and starts to disappear. While in the process of Alona vanishing, we see Will, and amazingly enough Will sees Alona.
Will is your basic medium, who doesn't actually know that is what he is. He thinks that being able to see and hear the dead is just a curse passed down to him from his father, whom committed suicide. Will notices Alona vanishing, and laughs at her; since he thinks that this will be the last time he sees the Great Alona Dare, he doesn't really think too much about it. But Alona notices and when she inevitably comes back, she figures that Will actually saw her and she goes back to the school to ask him what the heck is going on.
To make a long story short, Alona helps Will and while helping him ( he's supposed to be helping her too), she discovers that his best friend has been trying to reconnect a spirit with it's body and all sorts of crazy things are happening. In the end, things are settled and Alona and Will start to have these feelings for each other ( not totally said, but it is a feeling you get).
The book leaves off with Alona ( still a ghost) and Will talking about him going to college. I'm so glad that I already have book 2 and can start reading right away.… (mere)

Thanks to Tor for the free copy in exchange for my honest review.

I'm a fan of the 'haunted ship/space station' genre (whether haunted is ghosts or aliens), though it's not one I read frequently. It's possible I'm easily impressed, but boy, this one had me ~stressin'.~ I think Barnes did an excellent job with building up feelings of paranoia and fear as the crew spends more time in the station and tries to learn what happened on the planet before their arrival. There is some mild (imo, for what that's worth) body horror - enough to make me feel a bit squicky, but not so much that I felt I needed to skim anything, and I'm a pretty big baby.

I was definitely trying to guess what was going on as much as the crew and really enjoyed the ride. I do think the main character, Ophelia, gets a bit in her head at times, but it make sense because she's a therapist; of course she's going to be over-analyzing everyone's words and actions, including her own.

The end was a little vaguely convenient, in a somewhat unsatisfying way, but it didn't ruin my enjoyment of the overall story. I'll definitely be reading Barnes's other book.… (mere)

Ghost Station is the new entry in space horror by this horror and I definitely liked it better than the first book. I am fascinated by the concept of space travel and exploration, and love the idea that we are not alone out there and those who are out there are not always welcoming and may be far superior to us. Space exploration can be deadly, yes, but it can also be lonely as well as exciting. You have to depend on others to survive so what happens when you don't necessarily have confidence in others on your team?

The story revolves around Ophelia, the ship's psychologist, who is sent to assess the mental well-being of the crew on an isolated planet where one of their crew mates has died. Wanting to do good, she is surprised when she is given the cold shoulder as the crew understands that a poor evaluation could get them sent home and make them unemployable. Ophelia is a bit of a mess during this book and I enjoyed her journey as she explored the impact her past had on her choices and her behaviour, but the fact she is ignorant of the impact she could have on the crew mates blows me away. She constantly talks about how different she is from her family, but doesn't really consider the implications of why she is sent there in there in the first place.

The first half of the book is quite slow as it deals a lot with Ophelia and her family and the secrets she has kept from everyone; there is so much going on in her head that it sometimes becomes repetitive. It's not that the introspection wasn't interesting, but it has to balance more with the action and this didn't happen until the second half of the book. A lot of the information was important to the second half of the book, but you had to be really patient for the action to start happening.

As mentioned previously, the plot was quite slow in the beginning, but I did enjoy the build-up of the tension. It revolved mainly around Ophelia's issues and whether what she was seeing was real or not as well as the issues she was having with other crew mates. I listened to the audiobook as well as read an ARC kindle version, and I really enjoyed the audiobook. Zura Johnson did a great job narrating the book and the other crew members were easily distinguishable. Personally, I preferred the audiobook.

Once the action picked up in the second half, it was good and there was a big secret to be revealed, something I already suspected. I wish the author had kept up this kind of tension and pace throughout the novel as the last quarter was the best of the book.

Verdict
Ghost Station was an improvement for me as I DNF the last one, but it did get bogged down in the first half with too much introspection. With such an intriguing narrative, I wish the author had balanced the mental health aspects of doing such a job with the action a bit more as I felt like they were two separate things in this book. I definitely enjoyed it, and am looking forward to reading more by this author in the future. And I will also be searching for more by this narrator as well.… (mere)