I Heart You, You Haunt Me in 100+ Books in 2025

Feb 01, 2010 Misty rated it it was ok

Shelves: own, juvenile-ya, gift, read-in-2010, poetry

meh...
will revisit

[later:]
still meh.
Review to come.

Review:
When Ava loses her boyfriend Jackson in a horrible accident, she feels like her world is going to end. She blames herself for his death, she shuts herself off from her friends and her life, and spends her time wishing she had Jackson back. And then, suddenly she does. Whenever she's alone, Jackson comes to her. He haunts her, speaking to her in her mind, touching her with cold ghostly caresses. Ava is so happy to have him back, but she kn meh...
will revisit

[later:]
still meh.
Review to come.

Review:
When Ava loses her boyfriend Jackson in a horrible accident, she feels like her world is going to end. She blames herself for his death, she shuts herself off from her friends and her life, and spends her time wishing she had Jackson back. And then, suddenly she does. Whenever she's alone, Jackson comes to her. He haunts her, speaking to her in her mind, touching her with cold ghostly caresses. Ava is so happy to have him back, but she knows it can't last; she has to make a decision: remain alone, with Jackson, or face the world again.

Lisa Schroeder writes in verse, so when I got my hands on this, I was kind of excited for that aspect. When done well (see Sharon Creech's Love That Dog or Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust) it can be very effective. The verse aspect builds an interesting story, layers some magic into the words. Unfortunately for this story, that wasn't the case. Rather than being an asset to the story, Schroeder's verse was distracting and forced. Though there were a few instances of the verse being what it should have been (a unique way of showcasing what Ava was feeling), most of the time it read like diary entries that were arranged funny. This is laziness and/or overconfidence, in my opinion. You can't just chop up lines or arrange them funny and call it verse. There has to be a real attention to language and words, to the way things sound and flow together. They should be read aloud and tweaked minutely again and again until they are precisely what they should be. Poetry should add something overall, its own unnameable something. It isn't just there because the form is non-traditional, you have to create it. I didn't feel Schroeder did an adequate job of creating it. Also, the titles for each "poem" just added to the feeling of it feeling really forced, and broke up the flow a bit for me.

Also, I found Ava to be a little crazy. I mean, I know she is really young, and as such won't always handle things the way she should, but when she starts to feel held back by Jackson's presence, when she is ready to move on with her life, she comes off really whiny and immature. I did like Jackson's role in this, and that she mistook his reason for haunting her, and I liked the healing process aspect, and even the mystery that Ava dances around in her poetic diary entries. But in the end, those things weren't enough for me, and I picked this book up twice and put it back down again before I got through it -- and it's something easily read in an hour or so. With a little more attention to the "poetic" aspect, or if that was discarded and it was treated as a diary instead, it could have worked a bit, and I would have liked it more, but as it was, I don't think I'll be reading more from Schroeder for awhile. But if you're interested in it still, grab it from the library -- it's not like it will take up a ton of your time, after all.

...more

5 likes · Like · see review

Mar 04, 2010 Bonnie rated it really liked it

Shelves: young-adult, 2008-books

I didn't realize it
at first.
But this book is written
in verse.

That makes everything seem
much more
IMPORTANT
and
PROFOUND.

Maybe I should write in verse
all the time?

The story
is
simple.

Boy meets girl.
Boy dies.
Girl can't move on.
Neither can boy.

It's a very
quick read.
I mean,
verse?

Pages in minutes
to read.

I think it took me
an hour in all.

A good little book
about grief
and having to
finally
let go. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

May 21, 2011 Brittney rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-2011, 1-young-adult, library

I feel I should probably preface this by saying that I'm reviewing this book several days after finishing it and have since read several others, but I still felt like I should say something about the book.

In the past I haven't had too much luck when it comes to books written in verse, as far as enjoying them goes. I'm not entirely sure why that is because I never really think they're bad, but I typically don't find them amazing either.

I Heart You, You Haunt Me, though, seems to be the exception. ...more

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Oct 01, 2010 Amber rated it it was ok

Shelves: young-adult

I really fast read. It's set up like a poem. I read it in an hour waiting for a movie to start. It's not a book that I would have picked myself but I had to read if for a book club. ...more

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