NEVER SEEN THE STARS

A teen facing progressive sight loss sees her friend’s ghost.

Hattie Murphy’s trying to cope after her good friend Mason, who had epilepsy, drowned in a kayaking accident. Hattie sometimes dreamed they could have been more than friends. But it’s hard when her mother is so overbearing, and her father, now blind from retinitis pigmentosa, is depressed. Her increasingly steamy relationship with Richard, “the Arthur to [her] Guenevere” in their high school play, Camelot, would be a promising distraction…if she weren’t apparently competing with her co-Guenevere, Amanda, for his attention. When Hattie learns she’s inherited RP, she struggles to conceal her vision difficulties. But RP isn’t the only secret she’s keeping: Somehow, she can converse—well, banter—with Mason’s ghost. What does he want? Is he her guardian angel? Or is Hattie supposed to help him? While Mason sometimes feels more like a spectral counselor than a lost love interest, he and Hattie share some sweet moments. Korsh, who has RP, believably portrays Hattie’s misconceptions and conflicting feelings about the diagnosis, including fears of “ending up like [her] dad, defective and trapped.” Though Hattie’s tendency to misjudge others is occasionally frustrating, readers will root for the snarky teen as she comes to terms with RP and learns that people aren’t always what they seem. Most characters read white; there’s some diversity in the secondary cast.

A highly original exploration of disability and grief.