By: Jamie Steinberg
One hotdog with banana peppers please! If only her mouth wasn’t stitched up and she was still alive. No one can hear her, but she can haunt this food cart, desperately hoping to be seen and fed. That is until she is accidentally summoned by a teenage girl holding a seance with her friends. How is it that this girl can see and speak to her? And what is it that is suddenly stalking this ghost hoping to drag her into the dark? Grab a copy of A Dead Thing Like Me and devour each page to find out.
Hot Dog, as we come to know her, is a teenage ghost that constantly visits a food cart located outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art because she misses the ability to eat said item. She is also enamored by the young woman who runs the cart. Her [after]life changes though when she is summoned to a home in Florida by a fellow teen using an Ouija board. The girl, Logan, is actually able to see and speak to Hot Dog. Logan is a troubled soul herself and a very talented artist. Hot Dog immediately becomes obsessed, desperate to truly find a friend in Logan – like a real, human girl. Logan fully embraces Hot Dog whose dress is filled with bottles of memories and moments to drink in order provide inner strength, distraction and clarity.
The only problem is that Needle Finger is after Hot Dog. Needle Finger is an entity who wants to take Hot Dog’s soul and bring her into the darkness where dead things belong. This malevolent spirit resides in Logan’s walls thanks to a secret door in Logan’s attic. Hot Dog must confront the dark truth behind her death before Needle Finger comes after her bestie Logan and claims her soul as well.
A Dead Thing LIke Me quickly captivates. Author E.G. Young desperately makes your heart ache for Hot Dog and her mission to find peace for herself and a best friend in Logan. Despite her chattering bottle filled dress and stitched up mouth, readers will yearn for Hot Dog to find a place in Logan’s life and a place at her Halloween party. Adding to this fascinating read is that Logan believes Hot Dog might be the soul of her recently departed bestie Avery, but Hot Dog isn’t so sure. Besides, [non]demon and additional new pal Damon (and his trusty snake Horse) think Hot Dog is actually his ex-girlfriend Chloe. Who was Hot Dog when she was alive and what happened to her? You will turn page after page – quickly – to learn how these three fit together and how/if they can escape from Needle Finger and its quest. My only qualm about this YA paranormal tale is that there seems to be more of a friendship vibe between Hot Dog and Logan than romantic, but towards the end of the tale Young blurs that line and it doesn’t seem like a natural progression for our heroines.
A Dead Thing Like Me is a must read for young adults who are supernatural and paranormal lovers. Readers will quickly invest in Hot Dog’s quest for BFF status with Logan and each chapter reveals something beautiful and new that breaks your heart while simultaneously filling it. When it comes to Hot Dog, as Death Cab For Cutie once sang, “I will follow you into the dark.”