Audiobook Review: A (Dead) Thing Like Me by E.G. Young

A (Dead) Thing Like Me by E.G. Young landed on my radar the best way a book can: Maria Ingrande Mora told me to join the street team. I trust Maria’s recs so I did not ask questions. This is E.G. Young’s debut novel and I did not know what I was getting into and that made it so much better. Weird, tender, sapphic, darkly funny, and completely unlike anything else on my shelf. Check out my full thoughts below!

A (Dead) Thing Like Me

by E.G. Young
Published by: Holiday House
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A teenage ghost in love with life becomes bound to the house of the grieving artist who summoned her via Ouija board in this darkly funny YA paranormal.
One hot dog with banana peppers. That’s all Hot Dog wants. An invisible teenage ghost, she haunts a food cart outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Until one night, she’s accidentally summoned via Ouija board to a house party in Florida . . . where finally finally finally, people can see her.
All the party guests scatter, except for Logan: the cool artist girl who doesn’t just see Hot Dog, she actually wants to talk to her. Logan, who isn’t scared of Hot Dog’s stitched mouth or chattering dress. Logan, who’s grieving her own dead BFF—and called Hot Dog by mistake.
Hot Dog wants to prove it’s not a mistake.
She can be Logan’s new best friend. She can go to Logan’s Halloween party. She can eat snacks, have sleepovers, and hang out. She can definitely smile without scaring people. Exactly like a real, human girl.
There’s one problem: Hog Dog’s not a real, living human girl, and something in Logan’s sprawling house knows it. It scratches like rats in the walls. It opens a secret door in Logan’s attic. It wants to drag Hot Dog into the nothingness where dead things go. And unless Hot Dog can confront the dark truth of how she died, it will unmake Logan too.
Gorgeously strange and stunningly written, this YA paranormal masterfully melds camp and creep into a beyond-the-grave coming-of-age.

Review

I went in knowing almost nothing and I want you to go in the same way, so I am going to be careful here. What I will tell you is that this book is emotionally amazing and weird as hell, and those two things are completely inseparable for this story.

Hot Dog is a ghost who haunts a hot dog cart outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, cannot remember her name or her life because crabs stole her memories (yes, you read that correctly), has 14 stitches sewing her mouth shut, and communicates via Ouija board. She collects moments of joy in little glass bottles to release when she or someone else needs them. She desperately wants to be a normal living teenager and eat one hot dog with banana peppers. When a Ouija board pulls her to Florida and to Logan, a grieving artist who can actually see her, something shifts for both of them.

This is a sapphic book, which I had hoped for in starting it but almost no reviews mention this. The relationship between Hot Dog and Logan is the emotional heart of the whole thing. Hot Dog falling for this girl who is the first person to truly see her, in a story that is literally about invisibility, is doing real and intentional work.

I wanted to protect Hot Dog from the first chapter. She is endearing in a way that genuinely surprised me, because she is also deeply weird and a little bit unsettling and E.G. Young somehow makes all of that coexist. The book has dark humor and genuine dread and moments that made me audibly react while listening. I will never look at crabs the same way. I mean that sincerely.

The audiobook, narrated by Amy McFadden, is the move. Amy gets Hot Dog’s voice exactly right, that combination of weird and tender and genuinely funny.

E.G. Young is a debut author and this book made me want everything she writes next. Weird, tender, sapphic, and completely its own thing. Do not miss it.