Dead Is a State of Mind [Paperback]

According to my mystery loving 11-year old daughter; Dead is a State of Mind by Marlene Perez is a winner! She gives it five stars! It's 175 pages of nonstop mystery for a tween girl who loves a good thriller/mystery!

The story is about Daisy, a high-school girl living in a fictional town called Nightshade. There's a new boy in school, and he makes Daisy feel uneasy, although other girls really like him. The creepy boy tries to get Daisy to go to the prom with him, but she's not interested. Then a popular teacher is murdered and Daisy is on the case. Everyone warns her not to become involved, but she gets into it anyway.

The book is funny and not too scary. It holds a tweens interest from beginning to end and, at least in my daughter's case, she is asking for the next in the series! And frankly, anything that gets a kid reading is good by me! Seriously, there are no cuss words in the book and my daughter read it in a matter of a few hours. That's a real good thing from a mothers point of view.

If zero is the normal setting on the weird-o-meter, than on any given day Nightshade, California registers somewhere around a five. It's hard for a town that harbors a secret sub-community of werewolves, vampires, witches and assorted other paranormals to avoid being a little strange. And that's okay with Daisy Giordano. She grew up in Nightshade and, although she's not paranormal herself, she has powerful psychic abilities - mind-reading and telekinesis, to be exact. In fact, all of the women in her house are psychics. Daisy's mom is a psychic investigator with the power of psychometry, her sister Rose is a mind-reader and her sister Poppy is a telekinetic. So yeah, they fit right into Nightshade's general weirdness. Lately though, Nightshade is even more odd than usual and Daisy, a budding Nancy Drew, is determined to figure out why.

The first bit of extra weirdness is Duke Sherrad, a new student at Nightshade High. Duke claims to be descended from a long line of gypsy fortune tellers and while Daisy is obviously not one to knock a genuine psychic, something about Duke seems a little odd. Even after a popular teacher is murdered and several students claim Duke predicted his death, Daisy remains skeptical. She could definitely use her boyfriend Ryan's help getting to the bottom of this (he is the police chief's son, after all), but Ryan has been acting very strange lately. And if Duke, a dead teacher and a distant boyfriend weren't enough to stress Daisy out, it seems like her sister Poppy is falling for a ghost who hangs out at the Bone's mortuary. Just another day in Nightshade.

There is so much to like in Marlene Perez's 'Dead Is' series. The dialogue is snappy, the main characters are likable and the villains aren't, the mysteries are intriguing and there's just enough humor and romance to keep things light and fun. Daisy is a heroine any girl can identify with and support. She's not perfect, but she never stops trying to make a difference.

Daisy Giordano and her friends and family are back for a second, fun-filled paranormal adventure in the wacky town of Nightshade, in Northern California.

A beloved teacher from Daisy's school, Nightshade High, has been savagely killed, and the signs point to a werewolf as the murderer. The secret, supernatural "Council" that rules over the magical citizens of Nightshade is on red alert, determined to figure out if one of their own is guilty. Daisy is determined to bring her sleuthing skills to bear in solving the crime, refusing to leave the case to the Council, the local police chief, and her psychically gifted mother and two older sisters. After all, not so long ago Daisy saved her school's cheerleaders from a rogue vampire using her recently discovered psychic talents. Daisy realizes, though, that because she doesn't have the mastery over her gifts that her family has over theirs, it would be really useful if her boyfriend would lend a hand, as he did with the vampire case. But normally dependable, mellow Ryan has been acting completely out of character lately, showing up late or not at all for appointments with Daisy, bolting away from her with no warning when he does show up, getting into fights with other boys, and taking offense and stomping off in a huff from Daisy for no apparent reason that she can see. Worse, Daisy has noticed him hanging around town in the company of a young woman so lovely, Daisy fears that all of Ryan's behavior problems are because he's in the process of dumping her in favor of her gorgeous rival.

Marlene Perez has done it again, creating a wonderful sequel to Dead Is the New Black. Daisy is a strong, determined heroine surrounded by a wacky cast of characters, including assorted werewolves and vampires, Daisy's precognitive mother, her telekinetic sister Poppy, her mind-reading sister Rose, a gorgeous exchange student named Duke who claims he's a fortune-teller descended from Gypsies, an enchanted juke box at the local diner that sends messages to Daisy through the songs it plays, and her hunky boyfriend Ryan, who's keeping a fascinating secret.

This book is a fun, fast read, and it can stand alone without reading the first book in the series. However, there is a lot of information in the first book that would really enrich the experience of this book if read first.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys light YA fantasy with frequent humor. And for those who have read and loved Dead Is the New Black, I am happy to report there are also two sequels currently in print. Book 3 is Dead Is So Last Year. Book 4 is Dead Is Just a Rumor. The fifth and final book, Dead Is Not an Option, is scheduled to come out in 2011.

Note for parents, teachers and librarians: This book is G-rated. There are no incidents of drinking, drugs or adolescent sex either on or offstage, and Daisy's family relationships are warm and loving.

I grade the book as follows:

Heroine - 5 stars
Subcharacters - 5 stars
Fantasy world-building - 4.5 stars
Writing - 5 stars
Mystery Plot - 4 stars
Romantic Subplot - 5 stars
Overall - 5 stars