Ghost Planet by Sharon Lynn Fisher
My Rating: ★★★★
Elizabeth Cole is running away from her problems, mainly her on again off again fiance, and accepts a job on another planet. Ardagh 1 is a strange and formerly uninhabited world that's breathing life into a quickly deteriorating Earth. However, colonists quickly discovered a huge problem upon arriving: there is intelligent life there, and they take the form of the colonist's loved ones. These ghosts attach themselves to their respective human and must remain in relatively close proximity or suffer from extreme pain. Elizabeth is unsure about how to deal with having a ghostly follower when she gets the shock of a lifetime: she's a ghost. She died on route to Ardagh 1.
This is such an interesting book. Knowing that Elizabeth while knowing she was dead and seeing her go through a variety of emotions upon finding out that she is a ghost is such a fascinating way to start the book. It allowed me to follow the perspective of a "ghost," which is actually an alien incarnation of a random deceased person that any person arriving from Earth once knew. I was immediately engrossed by the plot and wondered why this planet is emulating the resources that Earth needs and why it's producing living, breathing people who remember everything from their former lives. In fact, as far as these "ghosts" know, they never died until they shock the living daylights out of whoever they are attached to.
As far as I could tell, there was no signs of any of the ghosts being there to harm anyone. They were the same person that they were in their former life, but alive and healed. I was glued to the pages as Elizabeth fought to be recognized by Murphy and figure out why she was connected to him and how to detach. Their relationship slowly grows as the story progresses, and we see how harshly the other ghosts are being treated thanks to the Ghost Protocol. I was routing for them to finally be recognized as real people and not alien beings there to destroy them. On the way, we learned interesting things about the planet and how it works. We meet a variety of fascinating characters as well as terrifying ones. Elizabeth's path to freedom also holds the answer to why and how she exists, as well as how their planet works. I wish that we got to know some of the supporting characters more than we did, but I'm okay with what we learned. I was so into the story that I almost wished that it continued on for a little longer. It's definitely one that I will be recommending a lot!
