Unraveling Isobel by Eileen Cook Middle School, High School Simon Pulse 291pp. 1/12 978-1-4424-1327-6 $16.99 g e-booked. 978-1-4424-1329-0 $9.99

Isobel's life has gone downhill with alarming speed: her mother's remarriage means a creepy new stepdad, a hunky but hostile stepbrother, and a ramshackle mansion on a foreboding island. It's enough to make any girl go crazy, but lsobel certainly wasn't expecting to actually see ghosts. Turns out, the accident involving her stepfather's first wife and daughter may not have been one, and lsobel may be the only person who can help finally put things right. The increasingly convoluted mystery plot (at one point lsobel is donning the garb of a long-dead woman to appear as a ghost herself), particularly when paired with the slightly iffy romance between lsobel and her stepbrother, has the novel at times veering into campy-fun territory more, perhaps, than the author intended. Either way, lsobel, all snark and sharp edges covering some intense vulnerability as she continuously checks in to see if she has crossed into mental illness (as her father did when she was young), is a compelling narrator, and readers will be as relieved as she that all ends well for her, despite the unpromising beginning to her year. APRIL SPISAK