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Josiah's Reviews > Ghosts I Have Been

Ghosts I Have Been by Richard Peck
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it was ok

Shifting the first-person perspective from Alexander Armsworth to his friend/rival Blossom Culp, we revisit Bluff City, Missouri in 1913 to experience history through the eyes of a young spiritualist. Blossom, in her early teens, has been less than close with Alexander since the events of The Ghost Belonged to Me, but circumstances draw them together via Miss Gertrude Dabney. She is a middle-aged woman of traditional English manner, who asks Blossom to placate the ghost of a Dabney family servant named Minerva who hanged herself decades ago. Blossom's success earns Miss Dabney's undying gratitude.

Blossom and Alexander are pulled into a con game by a Professor Regis, who publicly conjures a “spirit� to absolve Miss Dabney’s guilty feelings over her father's death. Blossom doubts the charade, and discovers Regis’s British preteen helper, Sybil, who knows every trick in the book of feigned spiritualism. Blossom's revelation of the scam boosts her own popularity but leads to demands that she prove her gift of Second Sight…a demonstration even Blossom is shocked to see materialize in front of witnesses. Blossom’s spirit is teleported aboard the ship Titanic during its final hours nearly two years ago, into the same passenger cabin as a troubled blonde child named Julian Poindexter. What is Blossom to do with detailed knowledge of his dying moments?

"There is nothing more real than fear, fight it though you may."

�Ghosts I Have Been, P. 125

Miss Dabney is elated beyond outsider comprehension when England's Queen Mary invites Blossom, as a result of her Titanic vision, to Buckingham Palace. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean with Miss Dabney and Alexander in a vessel much like the Titanic, Blossom waits for her Second Sight to put her aboard the doomed ship again to sit with young Julian while his parents abandon him to death at sea. Blossom hasn't the power to alter his fate, just hold his hand in the moment of whelming fear. Perhaps that is Blossom's purpose with Miss Dabney, Alexander, and for all her remaining days.

"I wonder why in storybooks only three wishes are offered, when in real life they are never enough."

—Miss Dabney, P. 75

Ghosts I Have Been is an improvement on The Ghost Belonged to Me. Blossom is a more interesting narrator than Alexander, and the story has better variety. The most compelling person is Julian, who cannot escape his doom no matter how Blossom intervenes. On this basis Ghosts I Have Been could have turned out to be a great novel, but it is too distracted by competing plots. I rate it two and a half stars, but I like how the series is trending and am open to The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp being the best entry so far.
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Quotes Josiah Liked

Richard Peck
“I wonder why in storybooks only three wishes are offered, when in real life they are never enough.”
Richard Peck, Ghosts I Have Been

Richard Peck
“There is nothing more real than fear, fight it though you may.”
Richard Peck, Ghosts I Have Been


Reading Progress

March 16, 2025 – Started Reading
March 16, 2025 – Shelved
March 16, 2025 –
page 6
2.8% "Cover art by Charles Shields. It isn't a flattering portrait of, I assume, Blossom Culp. She looks closer to sixty years old than fourteen."
March 16, 2025 –
page 15
7.01%
March 16, 2025 –
page 26
12.15%
March 16, 2025 –
page 40
18.69%
March 17, 2025 –
page 66
30.84%
March 17, 2025 –
page 76
35.51%
March 17, 2025 –
page 77
35.98% ""I wonder why in storybooks only three wishes are offered, when in real life they are never enough."

—Miss Dabney, P. 75"
March 17, 2025 –
page 96
44.86%
March 17, 2025 –
page 110
51.4%
March 17, 2025 –
page 125
58.41% ""There is nothing more real than fear, fight it though you may."

Ìýâ€�Ghosts I Have Been, P. 125"
March 18, 2025 –
page 210
98.13%
March 18, 2025 – Finished Reading

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