Young adult, paranormal, romance and adventure series. Reverse harem. Cozy mystery.Think it’s difficult to get into Harvard University? Try Vita Post Mortem Academy, a prestigious high school where John F. Kennedy teaches a class called American Ghosts stories, Albert Einstein grades science tests, and history’s most brilliant and deceased minds make up the rest of the teaching staff. Not a … Not a problem for Jules Winklevoss, one of the few who can see spirits.
Getting into school was a cakewalk, but Jules learns not all spirits are engaging and inspiring teachers. Fourteen years ago, Jules’s family thwarted an evil spirit’s rise to power. Now, the evil spirit wants revenge on all Winklevoss’s, beginning with Jules. As if evil spirit problems aren’t enough, add best friend drama, unattainable boy crushes, and homework to the mix, and needless to say, high school is going to be dreadful. Jules is determined to protect her family and keep herself alive, even if that means delving into the world of the dead.
What readers are saying:
“Harry Potter meets Haunted Hathaways/Oh My Ghost/Dead Gorgeous.”
“This book was great! The plot was engaging and full of surprises, a real page turner. I can’t wait to read the next book in the series!”
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Jules is a 14-year-old girl who spends all her time with her best friend Johnny, and her 13-year-old sister, Meggy.
After Johnny’s death in strange accident, things get even worse for Jules as she discovers that her entire life is a lie. She is actually “adopted” and now her biological family demands that she attend an academy for people with “special abilities.”
This way Jules learns that she is capable of seeing ghosts, a necessary skill to enter the Vita Post Mortem Academy, especially since many of the teachers, and even students, are, in fact, ghosts.
Things get complicated when Jules discovers that her family is the target of the revenge of Machiavelli, an evil spirit who recruits followers in the best style of Death Eaters, after Jules’s grandmother ruins his plans to form an immortal army.
At least now that she knows she can see ghosts, she understands that she hasn’t lost Johnny forever, but why doesn’t he show up?
Vita Post Mortem Academy is basically Hogwarts but with ghosts… But at Hogwarts there were also ghosts so… Like Hogwarts but without magic.
The detail that the professors are people like Einstein, John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe is really fascinating and funny, however, it is horrible to imagine that all the ghosts continue to look like they did at the time of their death, even if that implies very beautiful wounds…
It really reminded me a lot of Hogwarts, for example, there are also “houses” here, but there are 3. Corpus, the pure-muscle blues, Mentis, the intelligent-egotistical grays and Viscus, the reds… normal . It really is the first time that I would have liked to be in the “house” of the “losers”.
Jules befriends Dahlia, a very intelligent but shy girl, and Logan, a mudblo… sorry, a Charity boy, whose parents are not from a long line of visioners, they are Mugg… I mean ableptic (blind to ghosts). She also becomes a frenemy of Sharpée, a very interesting character to say the least, and of Chase, the unbearable younger brother of Ryder, who was in charge of taking Jules to the academy and basically left her drooling over him .
Together they must simply survive school, until Jules realizes that Johnny’s “accident” was indeed directed at her, plus the fact that Johnny started talking to everyone around her except her, and the fact that she knew Machiavelli was getting closer and closer. This is basically the perfect recipe for disaster… making it the perfect recipe for a good story.
The more I think about it, the more I doubt how to rate this story. I enjoyed it very much and could not stop reading it, but I feel that there are things that do not convince me. For example, Meggy is 13 years old and while Jules mentioned that it has always been like the difference was more, there really are times when it seems that Meggy is 6 years old. This does not affect the story in any case though.
There are also a couple of things that left me somewhat confused, but since it is the beginning of a saga, this does not complicate me too much.
Anyway, for me this is a highly recommended and fast-reading book. Although it might not be a good idea for overly sensitive people, especially going through descriptions of injuries or deaths.
I forgot to mention that I listened to the audiobook of this story. It was harder for me to understand it than other audiobooks I’ve heard, but I quite liked the narrator anyway. However, I still laugh a lot when they try to make voices. In this particular case, the narrator is a man with a deep voice, and Meggy’s voice is “soft.” You really get used to it fast, but it always makes me laugh when I start an audiobook.
PS: A detail that is not very relevant but that I cannot get out of my head is that the girl on the cover is too blonde for me to be Jules, and yes, it is irrelevant, but it bothers me .
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*Audible Review *
Narrated by Timothy Burke
I loved everything about this book! I was pulled into the story from the first page until the last. Jules is a fantastic character and very relatable. The storyline was engaging and entertaining, and full of surprises. A fantastic read and I definitely recommend it!
Timothy really captured each character perfectly and kept me wanting more. I will definitely download and listen to more stories narrated by him!
Can’t wait to read more of this authors books!
The Light of Supremazia ((after)life lessons Book 1) Kindle Edition
by Alana (Siegel) Mag
Building on the new wave of Academy books, Ms. Mag creates a unique universe in which there is a hidden (of course, why wouldn’t the world notice) group of psychics that help run the world.
Juliandra, who prefers to be called Jules, loses her best friend and her family in one. Her friend dies in a tragic accident and her family tells her that she is adopted. Then she is whisked away to Vita Post Mortem Academy.
There are good parts of the story. The speed at which it moves is one and scens like the one in the saloon. The saloon scene is like a paranormal version of the Star Wars Cantina. Instead of the various alien species, the Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr and Elvis make appearances. Einstein and JFK are actual faculty.
But with all that fun, some of the writing is a bit clunky. In one instance, I had to go back and read a section several times because the speaker wasn’t identified. The speaker was last mentioned over a page ago and it took a while to connect them. There were also paragraphs that needed an editor to go through and get rid of unnecessary words. Many of the characters are just a pile of quirk and physical description. Other than that, stereotypes abound.
Ms.Mag is trying too hard to be the next JK Rowling instead of finding her own voice. Ms. Mag spends way too much time trying to establish how weird the school is, instead of show how much like a normal school it could be.
All in all a fun read for an academy story junkie who is in between AJ Macey and CM Stunich books.
3 stars out of 5
https://www.amazon.com/Light-Supremazia-after-life-lessons-ebook/dp/B015M3KJGE