Ghostgirl #2

Homecoming by Tonya Hurley (2009)

Charlotte Usher is having the same kind of luck in the afterlife as she had when she was alive--no one will pay any attention to her! Her Dead Ed friends are so wrapped up in their reunions with dead family members and their internship activities they seem to stop noticing Charlotte. That's a familiar place for Charlotte, who died trying to become popular. She ends up hanging around with Maddy, another loner who actually seems to be nurturing Charlotte's insecurities. Then Charlotte's best friend (from the real world), Scarlett, needs help only a dead friend like Charlotte can give her. Petula, Scarlett's petulent, self-obsessed older sister, is in a coma after developing a virulent staph infection from a botched pedicure. While Petula waits for death, literally, in a ghost version of a hospital intake office, Scarlett manages to cross over to the dead world, make contact with Charlotte, and then, ultimately snag her sister right before the nurse calls Petula's name! And just in time for Homecoming! Hurray!

This second installment in the Ghostgirl series moves more smoothly than the first and explains some of the information missing from the first, such as Charlotte's lack of family. Homecoming also has more blatantly comic moments than the first volume, perhaps because Petula is such an obvious target for ridicule.