Croak - Gina Damico

Lexingon, or Lex for short, was a good girl growing up.  She and her twin sister Concordia, aka Cordy, have done everything together as they were growing up.  When high school hit Cordy stayed a model student. Lex, on the other hand, began getting into fights and getting expelled from school.  Over the last two years she has turned from straight A student into a juvenile delinquent.  When she bites a kid a week before the end of her junior year Lex's parents decide to send her to live with Uncle Mort in Croak.  Her parents believe that some hard farm work over the summer will straighten Lex out.  Little does she know that Uncle Mort is a grim reaper.  He is Mayor of a town of grim reapers, and Lex is one of them.  She doesn't know what to think when Uncle Mort tells her what she really is, and he's is a farmer just not the traditional sense.  When he takes her out to the field for the first time she kills (takes the soul), and Lex wants to go after the killer. Her uncle tells her not to.  They are only there to take the soul of the dead person and transport them to the afterlife.  The next day she and her partner Diggs, the boy who is staying with her and Mort at Mort's house, go out into the field on their own.  While they are out they discover a dead person at a baseball game.  There is no apparent cause of death.  The only thing that stands out is the eyes are completely white.  As Lex assimilates in with the Grims, she is amazed at how well she fits in with them.  As the unexplained deaths start to pile up the Juniors, the group of young Grims, take it upon themselves to figure out the cause of these deaths.  They piece together that someone is taking Elixer and injecting the people to make them die when they aren't supposed to.  They also theorize that it is a Grim, either current or former, since no one else can gain access to the Elixer besides them.  Lex and Diggs tell Uncle Mort what they think might be happening.  He applaudes them for figuring it out and decides it is time to let the citizens of Croak know what is going on.  Everyone else belives that Lex is behind the unexplainable deaths, because they started to happen after she got to Croak.  Does Lex really have the capability to kill without remorse and not remember doing it, or is someone just making it look like she's the one killing the people who aren't ready to die just yet? 

I absolutely enjoyed this book.  It was such a fun read.  I loved the character of Lex.  She's smart, snarky, and scarcastic, but when push comes to shove she does the right thing.  The ending resolves most of the plot threads and leaves it open for a sequel to be written.  I wouldn't mind a sequel, but it is just a good story that only needed one book to tell it.

T.B. 4/26/12