Delightful, Funny & Heartwarming.
I just loved this book. Delightful, mysterious, funny and quirky. As the story unfolds, it's being narrated by dead people in the local cemetery (brilliant!). The characters are sweet, memorable, very 'normal' and relatable, and there is some true history behind the story about a mansion in New Hampshire that was started by an animal lover and eventually turned into hunting grounds for the wealthily called 'The Millionaires' Hunt Club.' This book has such funny humour that I found myself laughing aloud many times. A fantastic tragic comedy.
A favourite bit from the book told by the dead-people narrators: 'The first rule is, of course, No Meddling, and if you meddle too much, your spirit can explode. A gone-in-a-flash type thing. A bright light, a puff of smoke, a slight lingering stench. The second rule explains the Importance of Caring for the People of Everton. If you stop caring about the events of the living, you're in direct violation of our cemetery, and your soul shrivels up before it disappears, like a browning, withering houseplant. It's less dramatic than an explosion of white light, but the end result is the same. You go Quiet. There are many graves in our yard where there is a stone and no soul lingering above it, someone who has become nothing but a rock. But, we can resist it, the Quieting, as long as we continue to keep tabs on the events of the living. We care for them; we root them on. We try our best not to meddle. Some of the other rules are silly, added over the years, rules like No Lawn Games and No Evil-Doing and No Unnecessary Singing, but we take those first two rules as seriously as we can. We don't know if there's anything after this. Maybe nothing. Maybe this patch of dirt and grass and ice and snow is all there is.'