Shattered Souls by Mary Lindsey

This is quite similar to the TV series titled Ghost Whisperer. Lenzi, as it turns out is a reincarnated 'speaker". Someone chosen by the IC to assist hindered souls in moving on. With the soul of her protector inside guarding her, she talks with these souls and does whatever needs to be done to allow them to rest. At outset she does not know any of this, she fights when her protector approaches her to get things moving. Ordinarily reincarnates remember their pasts but Lenzi does not. Eventually she first trusts then falls in love with her protector, dumping her long time boyfriend in the process. The way that goes down seems mean for a good spirit like herself. Alden, her protector, disobeys rules to save Lenzi from the angry boyfriend. He then must face a disciplinary committee and perhaps be destroyed forever. Lenzi helps the boyfriend move on as a hindered soul. She gets on with assisting souls and even resisting a malevolent spirits that carve words into her skin. There are exorcisms involving holy water and several other protectors. Lenzi has a personal malevolent soul which has yet to be made to cross over permanently. There is one nasty encounter with this soul. This IC board has quite a list of rules and points to be gotten and seems kind of silly to me. Actually if I think too hard about this the entire story is a bit corny. Its all derivative. I can point to the movie the Exorcist for some of the material here for instance as well as Ghost Whisperer mentioned above. Having said that, the paranormal genre is very popular with teens now so perhaps teens not familiar with the tv show and movie and other bits gotten from elsewhere could get into it. Except for Lenzi's personal malevolent soul things are pretty well resolved in the end but I suspect there will be a trilogy here anyway. jdw 1/3/12