Moment of Truth is book five in the Saranormal series. Our 12-year-old heroine, Sara Collins, has been able to see and hear ghosts since she was four years old. This has been her closely-guarded secret all her life. The only other persons who know are her widowed father, Mike Collins, and her mother's grandmother, their widowed landlady, Lady Azura. See book four, Spirits of the Season, for why Mike fled with baby Sara to California, and why Lady Azura's kinship was kept secret for the first three books. Sara inherited her powers from Lady Azura and her mother. (Lady Azura's daughter, Diana, and granddaughter, Natalie, weren't psychic at all.) Lady Azura's powers may be fizzling out at her age, but she can still teach Sara.

In book three, Mischief Night, Sara developed another power: having visions. They're usually of the past, but might be the present. Sometimes she even gets the thoughts of the person in her vision. Great -- something else to keep from other people. She doesn't want to be considered a freak at school. At least when she zones out during a vision, no one thinks she's having a mild form of epilepsy.

Lily Randazzo is Sara's best friend. This is the first time in her life she's had one. Sara doesn't even what them to break up. How can she tell Lily that Kyle, the new boy she likes who likes her, is a ghost who can be seen and heard by non-psychics because he doesn't know he's dead? Thinking clearly can't be easy when Sara is short on sleep because the sobbing female ghost in the bedroom next to Sara's has been louder lately.

A subplot is the middle school's prom, called 'Morp'. Lily and Sara's friend Avery doesn't know why dances where the girls ask the boys used to be called Sadie Hawkins dances, but I do. It comes from a 1934-1977 comic strip called 'Lil' Abner'. Lil' Abner's hillbilly home town of Dogpatch, Kentucky had an annual Sadie Hawkins Day race. It was started by early settler Hekzebiah Hawkins when his very homely daughter, Sadie, turned 35 without ever having a boyfriend. All the Dogpatch bachelors had to run on foot. If Sadie ran after them. If she caught one of them, he'd have to marry her. After the first race, it was all the unmarried Dogpatch women chasing after unmarried Dogpatch men. (Back then it was considered a disgrace for a woman to never get married.)

Sara does NOT like the idea of having to ask a boy to the Morp. Will she get up the nerve to ask that cute Jayden to go with her?

NOTES:

Chapter 1:

a. It's late February.

b. The owner of Scoops Ice Cream parlor isn't one of Lily Randazzo's huge extended family, just a family friend. She still calls him 'Uncle Paul'.

c. The Dina the other girls are talking about is an 8th grader, the daughter of Janelle Martino, the co-worker Mike Collins has been seeing. Dina's a mean girl and she wants her divorced parents to get back together, so she doesn't like Mike. See book four for more. See book two, Haunted Memories for why Dina hates Sara.

d. In book three, Jack L. was said to like Avery. I guess he's switched to Lily since October. (He's called Jack L. because there's another Jack on the soccer team. That's Jack R.)

Chapter 2: Lily is soon able to rattle a lot of facts about cute, green-eyed, brown-haired Kyle from Florida.

Chapter 3:

a. We find out why Sara can't block out the sobbing ghost with her headphones.

b. Mike and Janelle have made a decision about dating.

c. The mirror in Lady Azura's fortune-telling room broke.

Chapter 4:

a. Lady Azura teaches Sara a few new things about ghosts.

b. The sobbing ghost in the pink bedroom lost her three-year-old son to diphtheria back in the early 1900s, before there was a vaccine.

c. Sara helped the ghost of Alice, who had died of polio, in book two.

d. Lady Azura gives Sara a crystal or semi-precious gem each book. This time it's tourmaline (semi-precious).

Chapter 5:

a. A blizzard has knocked out the electrical power at more houses than Lady Azura's. Good thing it's back before the next night.

b. Sara's reply to Lily makes her and their friends stare.

Chapter 7: Sara discusses Klye with Lady Azura.

Chapter 8: Kyle's last name is Parker. Sara reads about his family's death. His parents were John and Cecily Parker. Cecily has a sister in Ocean City, Carla Daly, who has a husband named Edward and two sons named Thomas and Charles. Could that be the cute Tom Daly who is going to the Morp with Dina?

Chapter 9:

a. Something happens with Lily that freaks Sara out.

b. Sara's dad helps her find a dress for the dance.

Chapter 10: The little boy who died of diphtheria was named Angus.

This is another good entry in really enjoyable tween series. I like Sara, her friends, and Lady Azura. The Morp didn't work out as planned, but I think it ended well enough. ( )

In this book Sara and her friends meet an unusual guy. He is nice and good looking, and dead. But everyone can still see him and Sara's BFF, Lily has a major crush on him. Sara knows that once he relizes he is dead there could be some bad mojo and tries to keep Lily away from him. Will she have to lose her friend to save her?

This is such a fun series. Sara is growing into a pretty responsible kid. I like her family and friends. Tweens could have a worse role model. Looking forward to more adventures with Sara. ( )