Past Midnight (Harlequin Teen) [Paperback]

Mara Purnhagen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2010 | Series: Harlequin Teen

Let me set the record straight. My name is Charlotte Silver and I'm not one of those paranormal-obsessed freaks you see on TV…no, those would be my parents, who have their own ghost-hunting reality show. And while I'm usually roped into the behind-the-scenes work, it turns out that I haven't gone unnoticed. Something happened on my parents' research trip in Charleston—and now I'm being stalked by some truly frightening other beings. Trying to fit into a new school and keeping my parents' creepy occupation a secret from my friends—and potential boyfriends—is hard enough without having angry spirits whispering in my ear. All I ever wanted was to be normal, but with ghosts of my past and present colliding, now I just want to make it out of high school alive….

Editorial Reviews

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I was never normal, but I liked to pretend that I was. It usually took a few months before everyone else caught on. School would start out just fine, then Halloween would roll around, my parents would be all over the local news, and suddenly I would find myself exposed as Charlotte Silver, Princess of the Paranormal. I don't know why I thought this year would be any different, but I did. And maybe it was different, but not in the way I had hoped. If anything, it was much, much worse.

We had spent the summer in Charleston, South Carolina. My parents were producing another one of their documentaries, this one called Haunted Hospitality. They spent their days researching old hotels and restaurants that claimed to have ghosts, while I relaxed at the beach and took walking tours of the city with my sister Annalise, who was a sophomore at the College of Charleston. She worked part-time at one of the supposedly haunted local restaurants during her summer break.

"The only spooky thing about the place is my boss," she told me as we spread towels out on the sand. "He can get a little handsy, if you know what I mean."

I didn't, but I could guess. Annalise was strikingly beautiful with large hazel eyes and glossy black hair, just like our mom. Growing up, everyone talked about how she would become a model, but she was just over five feet tall, which is definitely a drawback in the modeling industry. Still, my parents had used her a few times for reenactments in their documentaries. Annalise would pull her hair into a bun, slip on a white Victorian dress and walk slowly in front of a green screen. When special effects were added later, she would appear as a transparent figure f loating above the f loor. She made a great ghost, which was ironic because in real life she was the one everyone seemed to notice while I was the one who slipped by, barely detected.

While Annalise resembled Mom, I took after Dad—tall and wiry, with dark hair that hung so straight it was infuriating. There wasn't even the hint of a curl. I kept it just long enough to tuck behind my ears and secretly resented it when Annalise complained that her glossy locks were simply "too bouncy."

During our third week in Charleston we decided to spend the morning at Waterfront Park. It was a warm Friday in June, the breezy air tinged with the sharp scent of seawater and the shrieks of gliding gulls. We walked along the pier searching for a place to sit and watch the boats. Tourists occupied all of the wide wooden bench swings that lined the dock, so we waited until a couple laden with cameras lumbered to their feet, then claimed the swing as our own. We sat back and rocked slowly, enjoying a clear view of the docked cruise ships and darting birds.

"This is nice," I said, pushing down on my feet to sway the swing.

"Summers are the best," Annalise murmured. She sounded drowsy. I felt tired, too, and worried that we might both fall asleep on the swing and wake up hours later, our arms bubbling red with sunburn.

"Maybe we should walk down to the beach."

"Can't. We have to meet Mom and Dad in less than an hour, and it'll take that long to walk to the beach and back."

I stopped swinging. "They didn't say anything to me about filming a scene today."

Annalise smiled. "They called me this morning. They need more chum."

"Chum" was what we called anyone who was brought in specifically to draw out paranormal energy. Some people claimed that a ghost would appear only if a certain kind of person was present, such as a curious child or a pretty girl. I didn't have to guess what kind of person my parents needed, and I felt a familiar twinge of jealousy. I was never asked to serve as ghost bait. Maybe I should have been grateful, but part of me wondered if it was because our parents didn't think I was good-looking enough to attract the interest of some dead, disembodied guy. It was insulting, really. Of course, no one in my family truly believed in ghosts, but still. Before I could get myself too wound up, Annalise spoke.

"They said they needed you, too."

"Really?" Maybe I had been wrong. Maybe my parents did see me as chum.

"Mom said the sound guy is sick. She needs your help."

Of course. Need a beautiful girl to lure reluctant spirits from hiding? Call Annalise. Need a plain and reliable worker to pick up the slack? Call Charlotte. Or don't even call—just tell Annalise to drag her along. After all, I couldn't possibly have anything else to do on a summer afternoon. I shook my head.

"I've got to stop thinking like that," I muttered.

"Huh?"

I sighed and rocked the swing harder. "Nothing."

We sat a little while longer before strolling through the old section of town, our flip-flops slapping against the sidewalks. The air smelled like jasmine and felt cooler than it had been at the pier. Guys stopped to gawk at Annalise while I pretended not to notice. It was actually easy because there was so much to look at: the historic mansions, the moss-draped trees, the horse-drawn carriages pulling noisy tourists through the streets. I looked for black bolts on the outside of houses, the telltale sign that the structure had been damaged in the earthquake of 1886 but had survived. There was something amazing about those homes, I thought, that they had been strong enough to survive devastation and were still standing today. "It's so beautiful here," I sighed.

Annalise adjusted her bikini top. "Yeah? I forget. I guess I'm used to it, though."

I didn't think I would ever get used to living in a town like this, and I'd lived in a lot of places. Any time my parents received funding for one of their documentaries we picked up and moved, sometimes for just a few weeks. The place we had lived the longest was England, when I was four and Annalise was eight. Our parents spent a year researching ancient castles. I don't remember much about the trip, but my parents liked to tell stories about how Annalise and I climbed up dark towers and napped in basement torture chambers. Not exactly a typical childhood. Of course, we didn't have typical parents.

Mom and Dad met just after college. They'd both studied psychology at Ivy League schools and were attending a national conference when they bumped into each other— literally, Mom claims—outside a lecture about parapsychology. Neither one believed in ghosts or hauntings or telepathy or anything else about the field, but they were interested in one aspect: disproving it. Within a year, they'd married and had set about debunking some of the world's most famous ghost stories, from wailing women in hotel hallways to confused Civil War soldiers roaming empty fields. They cowrote a book, Ghost of a Chance, explaining the scientific causes of most "hauntings." Their careers took off, and soon they were being recognized as the world's foremost ghost debunkers. Then, when my mother was three months pregnant with me, something happened.

They were filming one of their documentaries inside an abandoned insane asylum. Dad was repositioning a camera when he felt something brush past his leg. When he looked down, he didn't see anything, but later, when he checked the tape on his thermal camera, it showed a small figure, about three feet tall, sliding past him. When Dad checked the sound readings and matched them to the exact time he felt something against his leg, a clear voice could be heard saying, "Pardon me."

I guess everything changed after that. It was the one thing my parents couldn't explain. Dad became obsessed with EVPs, or Electronic Voice Phenomena. They're sounds that are too low for a person to hear but can be picked up by recording devices. He found natural causes for some of them, like local radio interference, and proved many to be hoaxes, but he could never fully explain what had happened to him at the asylum that day.

Dad once told me that the trick is not to prove something is real, but to prove that it is not real. My parents spent their lives trying to prove things were not real, and for the most part, they were successful. Very successful, judging by their book sales and TV deals. But I wondered sometimes if what they really wanted was to believe beyond a doubt, to have a clear and absolute answer to the question of what happens after a person dies. Personally, I didn't think I wanted to know because there was nothing you could do to change it, but I could understand how the question consumed people.

By the time Annalise and I found the restaurant our parents were investigating, I was starving and my forehead felt slick with sweat. All I wanted was some lunch and a blast of air-conditioning. When I opened the door to the Courtyard Café, I instantly knew I'd get neither.

Inside the restaurant it was dark and stuffy. A few ceiling fans churned the thick air slowly, creating only a hot breeze. All the tables had been pushed against one wall, with the chairs stacked at the other end. I knew most of the crew and guessed the rest of the crowd consisted of employees waiting for something to happen.

"Girls! Thank goodness you're here." Mom rushed toward us. She was wearing her work clothes: a pair of khaki pants and a black T-shirt. "We're way behind schedule," Mom said to Annalise. "The owner is getting frustrated and we've had absolutely no readings today." Mom lowered her voice and nodded in the direction of a dark-haired woman standing in the corner. She was wearing a long apron with "Mrs. Paul" stitched across the front. "She claims this place has a green lady." Mom smirked. "Right."

Mom didn't believe in apparitions of any kind. She said people thought they saw something, and their brains tried to connect it to the familiar, and that in twenty years of research she'd never once confirmed an actual, stereotypical ghost.

Annalise smiled. "I'm here for whatever you need."

"Me, too," I chimed in. "Could I just grab some lunch first?"

Mom glanced at me. ...

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harlequin Teen; Original edition (September 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0373210205
• ISBN-13: 978-0373210206
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,247,202 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Light, ghost-story mystery for young teens November 25, 2010

By Kate McMurry TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Charlotte Silver and her older sister Annalise have spent their entire childhood traveling around with their parents who are ghost hunters. But not the kind who actually believe in ghosts. Rather, they are professors who have dedicated their careers to proving that what various people claim are visitations from ghosts are simply predictable forms of electrical energy which Charlotte's parents track and record with sophisticated equipment. Unfortunately, in the midst of her parents' paranormal quest, Charlotte suddenly finds herself haunted by what appear to be actual ghosts, and everyone in the family is totally freaked out--but most especially Charlotte. Weird dreams, telekinesis and messages from the great beyond have Charlotte afraid to live in her own house and her parents scrambling to explain, and end, the weird paranormal activities surrounding their daughter.

There are two different plots in this novel. The main plot involves solving the mystery of the ghosts haunting Charlotte--what do they want, and how can she get rid of them? The secondary plot consists of Charlotte trying to fit in at a new school where her parents--at the insistence of her college-sophomore sister--have promised to allow Charlotte to finish out her senior year. In Charlotte's painful past experience, as soon as kids at her school find out who her parents are, her social life is ruined, so this time around she's determined to keep her parents' identities secret so she can have a chance to actually make and keep friends. Inevitably, of course, the secret gets out and she has to deal with the fallout.

I found it interesting and unusual to read a YA novel in which the parents play as large a part as they do in this book. Usually parents are either totally absent or cast to the irrelevant sidelines in modern teen fiction. The book also offers a unique take on ghosts by having them be something all the characters strongly don't want to believe in and keep trying to ignore or disprove.

This book can be safely read by young teens and might possibly not be exciting enough for older teens. Because of the muted way the author presents the ghosts, even when Charlotte gets scared herself, the ghosts aren't particularly frightening to read about. There is no romance, no swearing, no drugs or alcohol, and only very mild rebellion on Charlotte's part--and an ironic kind of rebellion at that. It is the parents who are the true rebels, living an unconventional lifestyle, and in rebelling against them, Charlotte is merely trying to live a settled and normal life.

Overall, this is a well-written novel, without any huge, gut-wrenching conflict. Charlotte is a pleasant character, and this is a fast, easy, pleasant read.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Lightweight creepy! October 14, 2010

By Zellie VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

To kick off my Halloween challenge, I thought I would start with Past Midnight. It sounded interesting and slightly creepy and since I can't handle horror thought this would be perfect. And, it was!

Charlotte is a simple girl who wants simple things but doesn't really have the courage to put her foot down and tell her parents no. That's where her older sister Annalise steps in. I liked Annalise, she was spunky and she obviously cared a lot about her sister. Their parents however, annoyed me. I think they pushed Annalise too far to get ahead of their career's and to me, that was just wrong. As a parent, they should have noted Annalise's freak out and left it at that.

As creepy as it was, I enjoyed the scenes where Charlotte was having dreams about the ghosts. I didn't understand really why she was seeing the girl and not her parents but I did enjoy those scenes and their to piece them together as I read. I wish there was more to the dreams than what we were given. It kind of made the ending sudden, even though everything started to make sense.

I liked Charlotte's friend Avery but the secret she was keeping got on my nerves. It's like the whole school knew and constantly mentioned it but no one bothered to tell Charlotte and it explained nothing as to why she should avoid Jared.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and it reminded me how much I miss reading ghost stories (but I scare extremely easily now that I'm older, weird huh?)! I look forward to reading the second book in the series!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars LACKS INTENSITY April 2, 2012

By Moonlight Book Reviews

Format:Paperback

Title: Past Midnight
Author: Mara Purnhagen
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Number of Pages: 216
Date of Release: August 15th, 2010
Synopsis From Goodreads:

Let me set the record straight. My name is Charlotte Silver and I'm not one of those paranormal-obsessed freaks you see on TV...no, those would be my parents, who have their own ghost-hunting reality show. And while I'm usually roped into the behind-the-scenes work, it turns out that I haven't gone unnoticed. Something happened on my parents' research trip in Charleston--and now I'm being stalked by some truly frightening other beings. Trying to fit into a new school and keeping my parents' creepy occupation a secret from my friends--and potential boyfriends--is hard enough without having angry spirits whispering in my ear.

All I ever wanted was to be normal, but with ghosts of my past and present colliding, now I just want to make it out of high school alive....

Review: Past Midnight has a fantastic concept, I mean ghost hunters real live ones in a novel for teens. This book was a quick and light read for me and something felt missing the whole time.

Avery is your average popular nice girl that accepts Charlotte into the cheerleader group. Charlotte is the main character and she likes to hide in the shadows like a ghost, the irony. Jarod is haunted and won't let the past go.

While I enjoyed the book it didn't do amazing things for me. The thing lacking was detail. When we go into Charlotte's past memories its brief and to the point, lacking the detailed perfection it could have had. The characters all were sweet, but they to were developed to fast, leaving out important details.

I missed the romance in this book. It is subtle and left out and you can tell ALL the characters want something to happen but no relationships form.

The reason for lack of detail is probably because this book is a series and it will be developed in later novels. That is just my theory. While this book was nice it wasn't amazing.