Starting a new school in sophomore year is tough, and Jessie is worried she won’t make friends. Especially once people find out that she sort of zones out now and again. Jessie herself isn’t quite sure what happens when she has her episodes, but she senses other people, and hears whispers and bits of laughter. Her old friends just teased her about it and accepted it as a personal quirk, but she’s afraid her new school won’t be as tolerant. And in the meantime, she’s getting awfully lonely. So when a group of girls offers up a dare in exchange to join their group, Jessie jumps at the chance. Only now that she’s standing at the cemetery gates, she’s starting to have second thoughts.

The dare is relatively simple: Jessie is to sneak into the huge Laurel Hill Cemetery after hours by herself and hunt down 10 specific gravesites. To prove she finds them, she must make a rubbing of each tombstone. Jessie is desperate, not stupid; she knows the girls are just playing a joke on her. But she hopes that in pulling off their dare, she’ll impress them enough to make a few friends. So she slips through the closed gates after dark, all alone, and hopes for the best.

Only it turns out, she’s not all alone. Almost immediately, she runs into Paul, a young caretaker of the cemetery. He explains that a group of actors has gathered that night to rehearse the Tombstone Tea, an event at the cemetery where visitors can come and talk to actors playing the parts of the dead. Paul agrees to help Jessie find the 10 tombstones and introduce her to a few of the actors along the way.

To Jessie, the actors seemed to be playing their parts too well, especially a woman named Jenny who is searching for her daughter. Maybe these so-called actors aren’t who they say they are; or, perhaps, they are who they say they are and not actors at all. And Jessie discovers she has a special gift that allows her to communicate with them. But then the situation grows out of control when Jenny takes a particular interest in Jessie, and decides she wants Jessie to stay with her in the cemetery…forever.

Running Press Teens brings us Joanne Dahme’s third riveting novel, complete with the exquisite writing style we’ve come to expect from this talented author. Dahme has a welcome way of pulling the emotions of the reader to the surface in order to really feel her story, and uses dramatic descriptions that touch every sense; touch, taste, smell, sight and sound are all fulfilled and satisfied. Plus, her vivid characters demand attention and feel so alive (especially the dead ones). Fans can look forward to her next book, CONTAGION, due out in the fall of 2010.