Brooklyn and Nico

By August R.

Lisa Schroeder wrote this book in an interesting format to tell a story. This story was told in poems between two teenagers who lost the same person but had different relationships with him, through the loss of this boy they become closer. The story also deals with paranormal activities and mental illnesses that come from losing this person.

These teens, Brooklyn and Nico both help each other through difficult times, while believing they may be going insane from seeing and receiving gifts from the dead ones they have lost. They try to forget and move on together by throwing themselves into activities like triathlons. Together they train every morning spending time together and helping each other survive.

The dead boy Lucca was an artist, Nico's brother, Brooklyn's boyfriend. After death Lucca haunts Nico with the intent to get him to save Brooklyn from herself, from fear, from Gabe. Gabe was Lucca's best friend who overdosed after Lucca's death and now he haunts Brooklyn.

Brooklyn by herself taking care of her dad, cooking and cleaning up after him because her mother has left with someone else and took her siblings with her. She starts off seeing Gabe in her nightmares and not being able to sleep. Then sometimes she sees him before her but she doesn't know who she can tell because her dad would be too worried and wouldn't even know what to do. It's good that she's able to turn to Nico and open up to him about stuff she would normally only tell NIco.

Nico really wants to help Brooklyn but finds the clues from his dead brother haunting him confusing. He tries to spend time with her by training and doing a triathlon with her. Every morning they train together and soon she starts to open up, it really helps him too. He hasn't really been able to talk to anyone about how he feels about his brother and helping Brooklyn makes him feel more like himself.