Croak by Gina Damico
Summary: Lex used to be a straight-A student, but in the past couple of years she began randomly attacking classmates and in general causing a lot of trouble for her parents, who decide to send her away for the summer to her Uncle Mort’s farm out in the little community of Croak. Little does Lex suspect that her behavior is common for teens who have developed certain powers specific to Grims. Grim Reapers, that is. The town of Croak is actually a society of Grim Reapers.
With her partner Driggs, Lex starts work as a Grim and finds that she excels at it. Almost immediately she wants to do more than just harvest the souls of the dead – she wants to exact justice on the murderers. Uncle Mort tells her no, but then a new kind of dead start cropping up: bodies with white eyes and cause of death unknown. Furthermore, these people are criminals, rapists, child molesters. Who could be doing this? They’d need powers like those Lex has…
My summary here does nothing to convey the light-hearted, humorous tone of the novel. Lex is spunky and prone to lashing out and doing exactly the opposite of what she’s told. I also like Driggs and many of the other Croak residents, and Lex’s parents and twin sister Cordy were funny while still sounding like they loved her. I guessed who the killer was early on so aside from the predictable villain monologue and all that, I thought this was a fun story that is just a little bit different from most of what out there for teens these days.
Work in Progress 