Hold Me Closer, Necromancer

By Lish McBride

Book Overview

Sam leads a pretty normal life. He may not have the most exciting job in the world, but he's doing all right--until a fast food prank brings him to the attention of Douglas, a creepy guy with an intense violent streak. Turns out Douglas is a necromancer who raises the dead for cash and sees potential in Sam. Then Sam discovers he's a necromancer too, but with strangely latent powers. And his worst nightmare wants to join forces . . . or else. With only a week to figure things out, Sam needs all the help he can get. Luckily he lives in Seattle, which has nearly as many paranormal types as it does coffee places. But even with newfound friends, will Sam be able to save his skin? Hold Me Closer, Necromancer is a 2011 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805090983
• ISBN13: 9780805090987
• Release Date: October 2010
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 342 Pages
• Weight: 1.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.8" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 14 to 18 years
• Grade Range: Grade 9 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

Great book

Great book. Made me laugh and made me cry

Stopped Halfway Through

I wanted to like this book. I really, really tried. But there is so much happening both in the plot as well as in the writing that I couldn't get past. To start, the book felt very cliché, from the characters to the incessant sarcastic one liners. There was very little character depth or development, as everyone's voice read the same. The plot bounces so much, and the author tries to immerse the reader in the world without much explanation, which I actually prefer, but McBride's writing is so vague and shallow that it seems to leave TOO much to the imagination. At one point, there was a tailed, named character in the scene and I had no idea if it was a talking cat or dog, or a werewolf, or if the villain was just having a psychotic episode and imagining things. There was so much I wanted to explore, but I couldn't go a paragraph without getting slapped with another 'joke', and the characters were so flat, when the main protag DOES have a valid emotional outburst, it's hard to sympathize with him because he just seems like a brat. When the main protag meets the only (alive) girl in the plot, I dipped out of there fast and tossed the book in my donate pile; I couldn't afford to cringe more than I suffered through within the two pages I had read after they met. It's obvious this is a YA novel, but being a YA novel doesn't excuse weak characterization and plot.