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Book: The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass
Read From: 25th February - 28th February 2022
Rating: 3/5 stars
Summary: Jake Livingston is one of the only Black kids at St. Clair Prep, one of the others being his infinitely more popular older brother. It’s hard enough fitting in but to make matters worse and definitely more complicated, Jake can see the dead. Most are harmless and don’t interact with people. But then Jake meets Sawyer. A troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school last year before taking his own life. Now a powerful, vengeful ghost, he has plans for his afterlife–plans that include Jake. Suddenly, everything Jake knows about ghosts and the rules to life itself go out the window as Sawyer begins haunting him and bodies turn up in his neighbourhood. High school soon becomes a survival game–one Jake is not sure he’s going to win.
This is exactly how horror books should be done! Marketed as ‘not for younger readers’, this is a YA novel that dives deeper and darker than any I’ve read before, covering some very heavy themes such as gun violence, racism, mental health, suicide and homophobia. The paranormal element was done extremely well and elevated the story a lot, creating an intriguing mystery that you couldn’t peel your eyes away from.
I absolutely adore books with multiple perspectives and being in both Jake and Sawyers heads made for such an interesting reading experience. They’re both on COMPLETELY different, even conflicting, paths and the tension just kept coming in anticipation of when their paths would eventually converge. There were just so many things about this book that made you want to keep reading - this would be the perfect book to read around the Halloween period.
Coming in at under 250 pages this is a short little book but it tackles so much and is very fast paced. Whilst this does feature a very cute romance, if you are expecting a queer love story I would definitely say that it takes a back-seat in favour of the complex topics that this book deals with. I think this worked very well and think I preferred that the focus was on these areas rather than the romantic sub-plot but I do think it’s important to dispel any potential misconceptions before going into this! I would definitely recommend - particularly for spooky season!
Thank you so much to Pride Book Tours for sending me a copy of this book and for my spot on the book tour!