Watermark Books and Cafe

"Dead Rules" by Randy Russell (HarperTeen, ISBN 9780061986703, $16.99)  

Jana Webster is obsessed with her boyfriend, Michael; intrinsically, stiflingly, fatally obsessed. Her particular brand of overwhelming love follows her from life into death throughout Dead Rules. On top of dying young at the hands of a bowling ball; Jana is also forced into the peculiar institution that is post-mortem high school. Apparently you can’t even be relieved of your education after your dead. Instead of focusing on her studies, Jana is fanatically trying to kill her still-alive boyfriend so that she can spend eternity in his loving arms. Unfortunately, as a mere spectral being on the planet, she cannot force events into action. So; Jana takes up with the head-"bad" boy of the school, the delectable Mars Dreamcote. Except Mars knows the truth about Jana’s untimely end and it isn’t as innocent as a bump on the head.  

Randy Russell’s "Dead Rules" is a distressingly sidesplitting story about a girl so consumed by her first love that she cannot see the opportunity death has given her; a fresh start and, quite possibly, a new romantic entanglement. Our endearingly fixated heroine learns about letting go of the past, discovering hope, and liberating yourself from a lethal kind of infatuation. It’s a critical lesson for any female -girl or woman- and it is delivered with witty dialogue, quick prose, and humorous, but macabre, characters.  

Review by Colleen McGee