Review: The Unquiet by Jeannine Garsee

Title: The Unquiet
Author: Jeannine Garsee
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Age Group: Young Adult
Category:  Paranormal
Release date: July 17th, 2012
Pages: 388 (egalley)
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Source: Netgalley
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Sixteen-year-old Rinn Jacobs has secrets: One, she’s bipolar. Two, she killed her grandmother.

After a suicide attempt, and now her parents' separation, Rinn and her mom move from California to the rural Ohio town where her mother grew up. Back on her medications and hoping to stay well, Rinn settles into her new home, undaunted by the fact that the previous owner hanged herself in Rinn's bedroom. At school, her classmates believe the school pool is haunted by Annaliese, a girl who drowned there. But when a reckless séance goes awry, and terrible things start happening to her new friends—yet not to her—Rinn is determined to find out why she can’t be "touched" by Annaliese...or if Annaliese even exists.

With the help of Nate Brenner, the hunky “farmer boy” she’s rapidly falling for, Rinn devises a dangerous plan to uncover the truth. Soon reality and fantasy meld into one, till Rinn finds it nearly impossible to tell the difference. When a malevolent force threatens the lives of everyone she cares about--not to mention her own--she can't help wondering: who should she really be afraid of? Annaliese? Or herself?

When Corinne Jacobs is forced to move to her mother's hometown after a horrible accident involving her grandmother and a house fire, she finds herself trapped in her worst nightmare.  Not only does she hold the weight of another person's death on her shoulders, but she soon finds out that there are many obstacles she has to overcome involving her mental health, too.  Reality begins to mix with what may be her imagination when weird, unexplained things occur to only Rinn's group of friends.  Have the pills stopped working, or is all of it real?

As if our main character doesn't have enough troubles, Rinn discovers that the previous owner of the house she's living in committed suicide in what is now her bedroom.  Aside from that, things seem to be looking up for her.  She meets an attractive guy, becomes friends with the popular girls at school, but soon learns about a ghost named Annaliese and the troubles she'll bring to them.  Once they jokingly have a seance in the pool room where she died 20 years ago, strange and horrible things occur one after the other.  Though her mom was a student at that time, she seems to be no help, so Rinn begins to dig into the past on her own.

I didn't quite know what to expect when I began, but I was pleasantly surprised the more I read.  While reading, you're taken for many twists and turns, which is what I enjoyed most about this book.  Rinn was an interesting main character, as I don't come across too many who suffer from an mental illness.  Being able to see the differences of when she's on the medication and when she's off of it made it easier to see what she had to deal with throughout her life.  I absolutely loved the paranormal aspect of the book and not knowing whether it was really happening or if it was more psychological than the reader is led to believe.

The Unquiet kept the right pace for a surprisingly bone-chilling book and the author did an impressive job with making this story come to life. Though the story was filled with mystery, drama, creepiness and suspense, I felt as though the ending wasn't executed properly, which automatically lowered the overall rating for me.