My GoodReads Review for The Haunting of Pico by Patrick Kampman - very, very readable

The Haunting of Pico by Patrick Kampman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a good read. I liked the characters and the central character, Chris, is just a darling, and clueless about girls in an adorably bemused sort of way. SPOILER ALERT
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Chris stumbles through the plot (the book is told from his point of view, first person, so it is very intimate with him), from his first day in Pico, through making friends at High School, to the dramatic climax, and just occasionally I wanted to kick him up the bum, but then so did his friends for being a dufus, but, most of the time, it wasn't his fault. :)

I picked up this book in the morning and didn't put it down until I'd finished it at lunch time, it was that engaging.

The only reason I gave it 4 not 5 stars is that, given the pace of the rest of the book, which is steady and slightly longer than other YA books I've read, I was disappointed that the two plots that were running side by side were both dealt with in very short measure at the end of the book. I wanted more on both, not really much more plot, but more depth to the climaxes of both the plots. I also thought that Tim's fate was gratuitous to the point of being callous (which was fine, Rose was a callous bitch in the end, but there should have been some reaction from Chris, but it is rattled off in the epilogue without much depth) and I would have thought that killing someone and dealing with their dead body, even a vampire, and dumping it in your hidden basement would have had its effect on the teenagers, but no, apparently Strip Karts is much more distracting than the dead person in the basement.

Apart from that, great book :)

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