The Unbelievables #1: The Girl Who Ignored Ghosts – K.C. Tansley

👻 Haunted Halloween Book! 👻

“Ghosts don’t exist. They can’t touch me. They can’t hurt me. They aren’t real.”

The Girl Who Ignored Ghosts is one of those books that has everything you want and all the stuff you didn’t even know you needed, and yet it doesn’t feel cluttered.

Intelligent female main character that loves to read and doesn’t have a perfect body – ✔️

129 year old murder mystery to solve – ✔️

Intergenerational multi-family curse – ✔️

Ghosts, AKA, “I see dead people” – ✔️

Library in a castle on its own island with signed and first editions galore – ✔️

Time travel without a flux capacitor – ✔️

Bacon, eggs and coffee – ✔️

Secret passageways – ✔️

Sparkly gemstone jewellery – ✔️

Magic – ✔️

Kat grew up believing in the unbelievables. Ghosts were her childhood friends until something so scary happened that she had to stop believing. Fast forward eight years and Kat, now a junior at McTernan Academy, surrounds herself with people (especially unbelievers), animals, plants and stones, and recites her mantra to protect herself.

Kat accessorises with metal and stone – earrings, necklaces, bracelets, you name it, for additional protection. I loved that her knowledge of gemstones carries over into her descriptions of people whose eyes aren’t boring colours but instead are aquamarine, larimar, hematite and iolite.

Assisting Professor Astor with his research into the mysterious events 129 years ago at Castle Creighton, Kat knows she is delving into dangerous unbelievables territory. Along with best friend Morgan, Evan the Terrible and serial flirter Seth, Kat winds up at Castle Creighton to investigate what really happened there and to study the Radcliffe Curse. Now Kat is stuck on an island with a hurricane approaching and there’s no escaping the unbelievables.

I loved the way Castle Creighton’s creeptastic secrets unfolded throughout the story. This story had friendship, forgiveness, hope, secrets and betrayal. It also had love, lots of love. Now, you’ve heard of a love triangle, but have you ever heard of a love pentagon? As a bit of a summary of how a love pentagon works (and for the sake of not ruining who everyone is in love with, we won’t use their real names):

• A is in love with B.
• B is in love with C, is friends with A, is jealous of D, is using E to make D jealous.
• C is marrying D but has history with and also still loves B.
• D is marrying C but has history with E.
• E still wants D but is having fun with B, is using B to make D jealous.

Did you get all of that?

Beginning The Girl Who Saved Ghosts immediately! I would’ve gone mental waiting for the sequel if I’d read The Girl Who Ignored Ghosts when it was first published.

Tip to readers: Make sure you have the sequel on hand when you finish this book. While a lot of plot lines are wrapped up other questions are raised and you’re not going to want to wait to find out what happens next!

Content warnings include sexual assault.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Beckett Publishing Group for the opportunity to read this book.

Once Upon a Blurb

Kat Preston doesn’t believe in ghosts. Not because she’s never seen one, but because she saw one too many. Refusing to believe is the only way to protect herself from the ghost that tried to steal her life. Kat’s disbelief keeps her safe until her junior year at McTernan Academy, when a research project for an eccentric teacher takes her to a tiny, private island off the coast of Connecticut. 

The site of a grisly mystery, the Isle of Acacia is no place for a girl who ignores ghosts, but the ghosts leave Kat little choice. Accompanied by her research partner, Evan Kingsley, she investigates the disappearance of Cassie Mallory and Sebastian Radcliffe on their wedding night in 1886. Evan’s scientific approach to everything leaves Kat on her own to confront a host of unbelievables: ancestral curses, powerful spells, and her strange connection to the ghosts that haunt Castle Creighton. 

But that’s all before Kat’s yanked through a magic portal and Evan follows her. When the two of them awaken 129 years in the past with their souls trapped inside the bodies of two wedding guests, everything changes. Together, Kat and Evan race to stop the wedding-night murders and find a way back to their own time — and their own bodies — before their souls slip away forever.