I Heart You, You Haunt Me

Author: Lisa Schroeder
Recommended Age: Young Adult
Publisher: Simon Pulse
ISBN-10: 1416955208
Year Published: 2008
No. Pages: 226
Genre: Realistic Fiction/ Fantasy
Main Character Gender: Female
Read & Reviewed by: Chloe


“Girl meets boy. Girl loses boy. Girl gets boy back… sort of.”

In this free verse novel, Lisa Schroeder introduces a love story about two teenagers, Ava and Jackson. Jackson accepts a dare which turns out to be his last. Ava is understandably devastated until she catches glimpses of him in the mirror, touches him in her dreams and hears his faint whispers in her mind. People may think she’s crazy but she knows the truth. Is he really back? And does she even want this?

As the story unfolds, Ava seems to lose herself and starts to doubt the people around her and herself because she doesn’t think people understand her grief and her need to stay cooped up in her house. Although she fleetingly shares her belief that Jackson is a spirit, she quickly realises that people will consider her crazy. This is understandable and Schroeder deals with Ava’s insecurities realistically.

Schroeder wrote this novel in first person from Ava’s point of view. Since the themes of the book were grieving, moving on and finding hope, first person helped me understand what Ava was thinking and feeling. What was also intriguing about this novel is its genre. It could be fantasy or realistic fiction. If we believe Ava’s point of view then the paranormal is real. I believed Jackson's ghost was real and so this was a realistic fiction novel to me. However Ava may be an unreliable narrator. If another character had told the story then I may have seen Ava as mentally unstable and the appearance of a ghost as fantasy. The genre can also reflect our own personal beliefs as readers.

I rated this novel ten out of ten. I read it in one night because I couldn’t put it down. I needed to know how Schroeder was going to resolve Ava’s problems so I kept turning the pages. This is a free verse novel and each page had a poem. Even though the poems were short, each poem created more meaning to the story and gave more depth to the characters. I recommend this novel for anyone interested in a short free verse novel about a supernatural love story.