Urban Gothic - Tumblr Posts
Review: A Day For Ghosts by Luna Elizabeth
Genre: YA/urban gothic
Rep: Aro-ace MC, lesbian MC
My rating: 4/5 stars
A Day For Ghosts follows the story of Ellie, a teenager living in the small village of WillowWood with her sister, Alexia, after the deaths of both of their parents. After Ellie helps clean out the house of the Gutermuth family, who moved away after their daughter, Arielle, was murdered, she gets stuck with Arielle's ghost. For reasons that neither of the two can explain, Arielle is spiritually bound to Ellie, and cannot leave her side. Now it's up to Ellie to help Arielle find out who murdered her, and help her move on.
Despite the dark subject matter, I found this to be, above all, a very cosy and comforting read. I enjoyed seeing Ellie bond with Arielle, and I liked seeing her come out of her shell and make friends with Amy, a girl who just moved into town, and Kelly, Arielle's living girlfriend. In spite of the horror surrounding Arielle's death, it warmed my heart to see Arielle finding comfort in her afterlife, and making friends with the people trying to help her. Found family is a strong theme in this book, and it's executed in an organic and endearing way.
There's only one bad thing I have to say about this book, and that is that the fallout of finding out who Arielle's killer was wasn't handled very well in my opinion. I won't say who it is to avoid spoiling anything, but it was very much swept under the rug, and we didn't get to see much of the consequences that the killer would face, or how it affected Ellie and her friends physically and socially, as well as emotionally. I would have liked to see that expanded upon, but regardless, it didn't take much away from my enjoyment of this book.
Here's the goodreads link if you wanna check this book out yourself, and buy a copy!
saying your names, richard siken / nice2knou, all time low / @pragmaticam / the loneliest sweet potato, sabrina benaim / invisible fish, joy harjo / lost in the supermarket, the clash / the glass essay, anne carson / you are jeff, richard siken / @retropopcult / hard feelings/loveless, lorde / the book of delights, ross gay / bag of bones, mitski / boot theory, richard siken / @oliverisokay / a supermarket in california, allen ginsberg / source unknown / cynicism at a supermarket, hedonic nihilist / punisher, phoebe bridgers / @suffer-rosa / @inthefields / grey tickles, black pressure, john grant / @elijahreblogs / @itsmieille / shopping for yesterday, adrian wait / @alexsiple / perfection, and this your living kiss / love in the supermarket, bardo / my north market, nate pentz / supermarket blues, bobby gross / loneliness in supermarkets, mateuš conrad / the raven cycle, maggie stiefvater
[ID: image 1: “I’m saying your name in the grocery store”
image 2: “We always say that we’ll keep in touch / Nobody does, but it don’t matter much / One last call at the corner store”
image 3: a comic panel of a woman dricing her car, saying “I’VE GOT A TANK FULL OF GAS AND A HEAD FULL OF DREAMS. TIME TO GO TO THE GROCERY STORE FOR NO REASON.”
image 4: “So, I’m at the grocery store because I feel sad.”
image 5: “Invisible fish swim this ghost ocean now described by waves of sand, by water-worn rock. Soon the fish will learn to walk. Then humans will come ashore and paint dreams on the dying stone. Then later, much later, the ocean floor will be punctuated by Chevy trucks, carrying the dreamers’ decendants, who are going to the store.”
image 6: “I’m all lost in the supermarket / I can no longer shop happily / I came in here for that special offer / A guaranteed personality”
image 7: “The shadowless light makes him look immortal,”
image 8: “After work you go to the grocery store to get some milk and a carton of / cigarettes. Where did you get those bruises? You don’t remember. / Work was boring. You find a jar of bruise cream and a can of stewed / tomatoes. Maybe a salad? Spinach, walnuts, blue cheese, apples, and / you can’t decide between the Extra Large or Jumbo black olives. Which / is bigger anyway? Extra Large has a blue label, Jumbo has a purple / label. Both cans cost $1.29. While you’re deciding, the afternoon light / is streaming through the windows behind the bank of checkout coun- / ters. Take the light inside you like a blessing, like a knee in the chest, / holding onto it and not letting it go. Now let it go.”
image 9: an image of a retro grocery store
image 10: “But I still remember everything / How we’d drift buying groceries, how you’d dance for me”
image 11: “I dreamed a few years back that I was in a supermarket checking out when I had the stark and luminous and devastating realization -in that clear way, not that oh yeah way- that my life would end. I wept in line watching people go by their carts, watching the cashier move items over the scanner, feeling such an absolute love for this life. And the mundane fact of buying groceries with other people whom I do not know, like all the banalities, would be no more so soon, or now. Good as now.”
image 12: “Fluorescent store lights, you shine through the night / Illuminate my pores, and you tear me apart / Mercy on me, would you please spare me tonight / I’m tired of this searching, would you let me let go”
image 13: “A man walks into a convenience store, still you, saying: / I only wanted something simple, something generic…”
image 14: a drawing of people walking around in a grocery store, pushing their carts
image 15: “In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! / What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?”
image 16: a picture of a empty grocery store, fluorescent lights reflecting on the tile floor
image 17: “I propose that we are all products in an / increasingly capitalistic market // No one wants you in the end”
image 18: “The drugstores are open all night / The only real reason I moved to the east side / I love a good place to hide in plain sight”
image 19: “Do sane people haunt the aisles of grocery stores in search of some sensibility?”
image 20: “Time does not exist inside of a supermarket. People walk in with lists and cravings and they’re out automatic”
image 21: a picture of a somewhat rundown grocery store
image 22: “I often stand and stare / At nothing in the grocery store / Because I do not know / What to buy to eat any more”
image 23: “You enter the same grocery store you’ve been going to for years. The layout is entirely different. You don’t recognize any of the employees. The only thing linking it to the previous times you’ve been here is the faded tile floor.”
image 24: a drawing of a supermarket, the view is from above, and you can see the aisles
image 25: “Busy crowds, lonly hearts, broken dreams / Shopping for yesterday. / Visiting the shared moments, / In all the familiar places / When shopping for yesterday.”
image 26: a drawing of an aisle in a grocery store
image 27: “Those nights in that in-between time / In in-between spaces, / Truck stops and 24-hour diners / From bygone eras and unforgiving lights all / Left up bright,”
image 28: “I could spend my life in the supermarket, going around the aisles / Walking among the plentiful and the abundant / Looking for things to help plug the holes inside, / Looking for something, hungry for something, I don’t know what / But something that probably can’t be found on shelves / Something that was maybe lost a long time ago.”
image 29: a picture of a grocery store at night, taken from outside
image 30: “I’m a lost child in the supermarket / Looking for my mom / I have no idea where to look”
image 31: “at the local (supermarket) - / and i can’t feel the bitter loneliness / while walking down an aisle / of ready-meals… // to be honest, walking in a graveyard / gives me a more cheerful aura / than walking in the supermarket…”
image 32: “but tonight, under the fluorescent lights of Dollar City,” /END ID]
Braving the late night blizzard in downtown Chicago
Taken January 2024
While taking a nap today I dreamt there was a hazard sign called "never found" which was used to indicate a location where people disappeared never to be seen again