Just Kill Me

Just Kill Me

By Adam Selzer

Simon & Schuster BFYR

Published 2016

I received a complimentary copy from the publisher through Children’s and Young Adult Book Review Board of Missouri in exchange for an honest review.

Megan is a very independent and basically marches to her own drum.  Her mother owns and runs a funeral home, so Megan is surrounded by death daily. Other than that, she leads a pretty normal life. One morning she has cereal for breakfast, no big deal, right? That morning her ABC cereal spells  DIE. Very creepy for Megan and the reader. She should have paid attention to the “sign” because her life totally changes.  Megan runs into an old babysitter, Cynthia, who now runs a ghost tour business in Chicago.  Cynthia offers Megan a job. Megan loves the whole idea of the job and throws herself into researching ghosts and ghost sites” Thing start to get weird when Cynthia starts talking about making the tour better by creating their own ghost sites by murdering people. Megan is drawn to the idea, but it only spells trouble for her.

Just Kill Me is a book that will appeal to the Goth and death obsessed readers out there.  The book’s main focus is death or to be more specific, murderer. The plot started getting very creepy about halfway through the book.  It switched from funny murder joking to hardcore death obsession. Don’t let the cover trick you into thinking this is a “sweet” book about death. The twist in the book will be just what the young adult readers will enjoy.

This book would be a great pre-unit read for historical research.

My favorite part of this book was the vocabulary and the ghost tales.  Megan was always researching new words from the Oxford English Dictionary.  I love the way Adam Selzer worked this idea and her new words into the story. I also loved the historical accuracy in the ghost tales told in the book.

Just Kill Me is a book that will appeal to the Goth and death obsessed readers out there.  The book’s main focus is death or to be more specific, murderer. The plot started getting very creepy about halfway through the book.  It switched from funny murder joking to hardcore death obsession. Don’t let the cover trick you into thinking this is a “sweet” book about death. The twist in the book will be just what the young adult readers will enjoy.

My favorite part of this book was the vocabulary and the ghost tales.  Megan was always researching new words from the Oxford English Dictionary.  I love the way Adam Selzer worked this idea and her new words into the story. I also loved the historical accuracy in the ghost tales told in the book.

This book could be the kick off to an OED word of the day or researching local lore so the students can plan their own bus tour of their town or surrounding towns.