The Blue Girl

by Charles de Lint

When I first started reading this book I suspected it to be one of those funky-new-girl-meets-the-class-nerd-and-turns-her-into-
a-beauty kind of stories with a fairy or two thrown in. What I found was an interesting, imaginative, if rather weird, book that I could hardly put down!
When Imogene begins her first day at a new school she stands out more than the usual new kid does because of her strange fashion sense, making her a target for the most popular girl and head cheerleader, Valerie Clarke, and her quarterback boyfriend Brent Calder. Imogene is not a wimp, however, and stands up to Brent when he teases her and her new friend Maxine, which causes the school ghost, Adrian, to fall in love with her. When Imogene finally meets Adrian (she’s seeing him out of the corner of her eye for a while), she is not freaked out in the least, and Adrian feels that Imogene is the first true friend he’s had. His other friends (if they can be called that) are the fairies, who also reside in the school. Imogene does not believe Adrian when he tells her about the fairies, so Adrian asks the fairies to come to her in her dreams. The last thing Imogene needs, while trying to balance school, having a boyfriend, and trying to hook her brother Jared up with Maxine, is fairies popping into her dreams. A human girl walking around with fairies and a ghost attracts the attention of the anamithim, the soul-eaters, who almost never give up in their hunt for souls once they’ve latched onto one person. With the help of Maxine, her imaginary childhood friend Pelly (who has come to life again with the fairies), and Adrian, Imogene has to fight for her life against the anamithim. But will she win?
The Blue Girl is an amazing mixture of normality, fantasy, and sci-fi.