Janeย is not your typical teen. She and her best friend Lexi call themselves the Creep Sisters. Only Lexi knows why Jane is different from anyone else: Her own shadow seems to pull her into near-fatal accidents. Jane is determined to find out why these terrifying things happen, and to overcome her shadow enemy. Her sleuthing with Lexi connects her own horrors to the secret history of a serial killer.
From School Library Journal
Gr 7 Up-Jane has a lot of experience with death. She was born dead, heart not beating when she entered the world. Doctors saved her but she has had several other close calls. Is she accident prone, suicidal, or just plain crazy? Her brushes with death have been explained away as "accidents." But no one really believes that. If she tells her parents or her doctors what's really going on, they'll think she's insane and lock her up in a padded room. Only her best friend and fellow "creep sister," Lexi, knows the truth, that each accident was caused by her shadow taking over her body and trying to kill her. The latest incident, a nail gun to the head, almost did her in and seems to have given her shadow even more power. Now she is sleepwalking and human remains have been found in the woods near her home. Can Jane and Lexi put all of the pieces together before the shadow finally succeeds? Creepy and exciting in equal parts.-Anthony C. Doyle, Livingston High School Library, CAฮฑ(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
From Booklist
Jane is a beacon for disaster. By age 17 she has swallowed drain cleaner, suffered 10,000 volts of electricity, and almost been flattened by a train. But it is the nail gun to the head that officially killed herโuntil the doctors brought her back. Now the sudden, suicidal impulses that have plagued her otherwise happy life have a physical form: a shadowy being who claims to want her back. โSome kids have imaginary friends,โ thinks Jane, โmaybe I had an imaginary assassin.โ Though there is probably only a short storyโs worth of plot here, Edgar Awardโwinning McNamee gamely runs his characters through the full gauntlet, delivering decently spooky whatโs-that-noise and was-it-a-dream horror moments. McNamee is especially graceful at jumping from the past to the present and meting out information in a way that both deepens the mystery and establishes Jane as a nuanced character. With roughly a scare per chapter, this is a fine, jolting read, especially for reluctant readers. Grades 7-10. --Daniel Kraus