Trying to Live with the Dead

By: B. L. Brunnemer

Narrated by: Kris Koscheski, Carla Mercer-Meyer

Length: 14 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's Summary

Hi, I'm Alexis Delaney. I'm your average 17-year-old girl. Except I can see the dead. And talk to the dead. And push them away and, well, help them move on.

So...okay, I'm not your average 17-year-old girl.

For years I've been struggling to survive the souls still roaming around. The shitheads always seem to find me. Moving from town to town every few months never helped either. More dead just always find me. But things are changing for me now. I'm moving in with my uncle Rory and cousin Tara. I'm finally going to be able to do normal teenage stuff I've been missing out on. Right?

Well, if this one bitch of a ghost could leave me alone on campus that would be great. Especially since I haven't told my new friends about my abilities. Can you believe this? Five good-looking guys practically adopt me on my first day of school and I still think they're a bit nuts for it. Now if I can only keep my life with the dead from mixing with my normal life everything would be great. Yeah...I don't see that happening either. But I'm going to give it a shot.

Who knows? It might work.

©2016 B. L. Brunnemer (P)2017 Tantor

Light entertainment

The story and characters in this novel remind me strongly of Japanese manga and anime series - a perky, somewhat silly female lead who is inexplicably the only one who can save the world from vague, dark threat; the inverted harem of gorgeous boys who fawn over said character; convenient opportunities for romantic setups (no parental authority, permissive uncle who allows a teeenage girl to spend unlimited amount of time, including sleep overs, with a group of teenage boys), yet everything remains relatively innocent and childlike between all the main characters. The psychic plot is barely developed and most of the narration is dedicated to describe every single aspect of each gorgeous character, the clothes they wear, and cute funny interactions among them. If you want very light reading to pass the time, or to listen in the background while doing something else (like I did) this is the YA novel for you.

23 people found this helpful

Interesting to say the least....

Performance wise I would say Kris Koscheski, and Carla Mercer-Meyer did an excellent job on all the narration.
As far as the story.... there are some inconsistencies. Lack of parental guidance. Why I found this in romance.... idk. If there’s romance it’s a slow burn. Like extremely slow. There’s only phone conversation, and the mentioning of feelings. Sex, zero. Kissing unless I blinked, zero. So if your looking for it, it ain’t here. It’s still an interesting story though. I want to know where this will lead.

4 people found this helpful

such a awesome story!!!

oh please say there will be more, left me hanging on hope for more. loved the charectors, the story, the narrator. I highly recommend this book!!!!

7 people found this helpful

Slow... but just can't stop listening...

This series was hard for me at first because of how slow it is to get to the plot... but for some reason, I just can't stop listening to it! I NEED to know what happens next. I love the dynamic between Lexi and the guys and I would love to see where this story ends up.

I am on my second listen of this series because I fell in love with these guys and their friendship with Lexi and I am waiting for the next book to come out on audio haha.

If you don't mind a wait to get to the goods, then I recommend this series. it's a good listen!

2 people found this helpful

Good, but...

I enjoyed this over all. I saw badly want Lexi and zeke to get together! But I have a feeling I’ll not be getting that wish. I enjoyed her strong but light hearted attitude.

However, I do not get girls in books sometimes. I don’t get the devastation of “destroying a soul” when that soup REPEATEDLY TRIED TO KILL 6 PEOPLE. Like it’s great if it can be avoided, but you can’t just let it go around killing people either.

2 people found this helpful

Amazing

Great slow burn story! Cant help but get emotionally attached to every character. You wont regret reading them.

2 people found this helpful

intriguing

loved it. but needed a little romance in it and more about the veil so..

5 people found this helpful

Great!

This book is funny and a tab bit crazy. I loved every part! Adventure mixed with RomCom and high school drama!

1 person found this helpful

A good start for the series

There is a lot of depth attributed to these characters and a very solid foundation is being laid that makes this reverse harem in high school aged kids more realistic and plausible. I look forward to the next in this series.

1 person found this helpful

Such a fun listen

I have to admit this is not what I expected when I picked a reverse harem. You usually think romance. In this book her five best friends are just that, her best friends and there is no romance. This book is lighthearted humor all the way though with a sprinkle of seriousness. There was not one chapter that didn’t have me smiling at some point. If your looking for a romance maybe don’t pick this one but if you want a fun book I would definitely recommend it. The reader does a great job with the different voices and emotions. I will definitely look for more books from both this authour and reader.

1 person found this helpful

Alright if you are in your teens

I like the premise of the book, but I could have done with mainly the ghost bit and lost all the male/female bonding and who was wearing what, and how wonderful everyone was. I persevered to the end but am very relieved to have got to the end. Of course it left it all open but I won't bother to read any more. Maybe if I were 40 years younger I might have liked it.

4 people found this helpful

I eventually Gave up

I tried to stick with this, I really did - I very nearly made it to the end but it was not very gripping and in the end I just didn't care enough about the characters to carry on. Also a lot of it didn't make sense - contradictory or just implausable. Performance was adequate, but working with poor material.

2 people found this helpful

Better in audio than pixels

The storyline for this book is good - girl who can see the dead goes to live with her uncle; makes friends with some cool guys and when they realise what she can do they stick with her - which is good because the Veil that the dead pass through is broken and everything is going pear-shaped.
Issues with the print version get smoothed out somewhat in audio - you can't tell where the wrong homonym is used (there vs. their) & poor sentence structure where it's hard to tell who's speaking gets covered up leaving the listener to concentrate on the actual story.
There is some word repetition where the same word appears 3 or 4 times in the same sentence and that can be jarring but the narration itself was good and there were nice tonal differences between the characters so you could tell who was speaking after listening for a little while.
I have got the next book, because as I said - the story is good & so is the narration - there were just some minor irritations (but far less than were apparent in the written form).

1 person found this helpful

More for teen readers I feel

In my opinion the writer was aiming for more of a teen audience.
I think the idea of this book is great. However, the telling of it was more appeasing of my teen daughter. Teens would enjoy the supposedly strong Alexis Character and the doting male friends, and how they bonded (This sometimes made me cringe a little).
I prefer the ghost side.
I will miss the likeable characters but wont be reading on.

Not to my taste

I kind of got bored halfway through the book. Maybe this is because it doesn’t suit my personal taste that all of them hadn’t shown her they all love her yet. I looked at the blurb of the second book and found out that all the boys have girlfriends. I will read the first book to the end but I don’t think I will continue reading this series. It’s my personal preference

Awesome Story

Utterly Fantastic Storyline. Looking Forward To Next Instalment. Once You Start Reading You Will Be Unable To Stop. Fantastic Twist And Turns. I Totally Loved This Book.

Loved the book

I loved everything about this book (except for the occasional bashing of 'normal girls', which I kind of also can't fault the book for - teenagers really like to shove people into neat little boxes, so it's realistic, if disappointing). One thing I would change about the narration was that I wish the guys voices had been fully narrated by the guy at the end. The female voice actress did a great job differentiating between the voices, so good that I could pick out almost all the guys' voices before being told who was speaking. That said, I think I would have preferred and enjoyed if it had been done by the guy, instead as it was hard to get into at the start because there's only so many voices on person can do and there was a lot of characters.

Love this book

Well worth listening too with a good story line and interactive characters. look forward to the next book.

Best book/audio ever

This series is one of the best audios I have ever listened to. The narrator has a beautiful tone of voice which is full of expression and life, she reads fluidly and her voice is soothing to the ear. So good is the quality and voice that I get sucked right into the book, it's relaxing and exciting all at once. The male narrator at the end also has a great tone of voice and it is nice to get the guys perspective in a male voice

I have listened to this audio on more than one occasion and will be listening again in the future. The storyline is epic and one of the best written series I have read so far

If you want a great story with a fantastic audio then get this one as to be honest it does not really get any better than this

Ten stars if I could