In addition to loads of details about New Orleans (past and present) and lots of information about the various communities and cultures and subcultures that populate the city, there's some discussion about gentrification and a bit of conversation about preserving history versus quality of life. Just like Ruined (or, you know, what I remember of it), Unbroken reads like part-paranormal-mystery-romance, part travelogue.

She's on vacation, so the week will be all about exploring the city with her bestie, smooching Anton (hopefully), listening to great music, and eating great food.īut oh noes! There's another ghost who needs help! AND DOUBLE OH NOES!! Psycho arsonist Toby Sutton (<-from the last book) knows that she's back in town, and he's determined to ENACT HIS REVENGE! AND DOUBLE YAY!! She doesn't have to enroll back into Temple Mead Academy, which is inhabited by the prissiest, meanest, snobbiest girls on the planet. So, yay! She'll get to spend time with hottie Anton, who she's been carrying on with via text message since her last adventure. Now Rebecca is headed back to New Orleans for spring break-her father has to go down for business-but this time she's bringing her best friend, Ling. THEN, THEY'RE STUCK HERE UNTIL THEY PERFORM A TASK? Shouldn't getting murdered give them a free pass or whatever? I know that life (and apparently death) isn't fair and all that, but JEEZ. (Is it just me, or have the ghosts in this world drawn a particularly short straw? FIRST, THEY GET MURDERED. Every ghost has some sort of task that must be accomplished before moving on to whatever comes next. Anyone who dies by murder comes back as a ghost.Ģ. Ghosts not only exist, but they are pretty much everywhere.Ģ. While there, she discovered the following things:ġ. Last year, life-long New Yorker Rebecca Brown spent a few months living with some relatives in the Garden District of New Orleans. As the premise of this book builds off of the resolution of the first one, spoilers about Ruined will follow. Happily, in the first few pages of Unbroken, Morris provides enough information to catch any new readers (or rusty old ones) up. So I skipped the rest of the re-read and moved on. Which is not the greatest sign of a book with staying power. About 80 pages in, I realized I'd read it before. In preparation for reading Unbroken, I figured that I should start by reading Ruined, the first book in the series.

Ruined by Paula Morris