Synopsis
Who would have thought the notoriously spooky little town of Nightshade, California, could get twice as weird? The summer before Daisy Giordano’s senior year, it does.
With their mom working on a case overseas, the Giordano sisters are on their own. These smart psychic teens have no trouble taking care of themselves. They score jobs: Daisy starts working at her favorite diner, Slim’s; beach-loving Poppy mans a snack stand on the boardwalk; and Rose lands a coveted position as a research assistant to the mysterious Dr. Franken.
But then summer gets strange. Residents of Nightshade are suddenly seeing double. Doppelgangers — look-alikes of familiar friends and neighbors — are popping up all over town. Daisy, Rose, and Poppy think it’s a coincidence, until the rumors start that their father, who disappeared several years ago, is back in Nightshade. Perhaps the girls won’t be having a parent-free summer after all.
Meanwhile, Daisy’s boyfriend, Ryan, is spending all of his time training for football, and like the other guys on the team, he’s grown enormous almost overnight. Could the players be resorting to extreme measures to win?
Between psychic predictions, sugar rushes, and beach parties, the Giordano sisters get to the bottom of these mysteries and more.
School Library Journal
Gr 7 Up
In this follow-up to Dead Is the New Black (2008) and Dead Is a State of Mind (2009, both Harcourt), Daisy Giordano and her sisters have just returned to Nightshade from Italy, leaving their mother behind to work on a mysterious case. All three girls have secured summer jobs. Daisy works the early-morning shift at Slim's, Poppy puts in her time at the Snack Shack, and Rose tediously toils for Dr. Franken at a research lab. The psychic siblings quickly find themselves in the middle of a multi-front mystery between a young and dangerous pack of Werewolves running loose on the streets at night and an invasion of some sweet-toothed doppelgangers whose mission is to wreak havoc and destroy the reputations of the citizens of Nightshade. To complicate things, Daisy's dad has returned to town, and the teens are left on their own to determine if he's the real deal or a "DoppelDad." Perez's latest tale does not disappoint as her upbeat writing consistently rings true throughout. While every plot thread isn't neatly tied up, readers are left with the impression that Nightshade is full of intrigue. Point reluctant readers who devour this title to other quick, supernatural reads like Brian James's Zombie Blondes (Feiwel & Friends, 2008) or Rachel Caine's "Morganville Vampires" series (Signet).-Adrienne L. Strock, Maricopa County Library District, AZ