Liv, Forever by Amy Talkington

Olivia "Liv" Bloom was thrilled when she won a scholarship to prestigious Wickham Hall. It meant an escape from foster care and time to make the art she loved. Most of Wickham's students are very rich, and they look down on scholarship students. The worst of the spoiled rich kids are the legacy students, called the Victors, the small group whose families have been attending the school for years.

Therefore, it's surprising that the most influential of the Victors, Malcolm Astor, takes a fancy to Liv. He's so different from the others, and he doesn't seem caught up in the strict formalities of Wickham Hall. Malcolm and Liv end up spending a lot of time together, making playlists, she draws on him (It's kind of hot). It all comes to an end when Liv is murdered.

Liv and Malcolm had arranged to meet after hours so that Malcolm can draw on Liv. They were interrupted and almost caught. To minimize the risk of getting kicked out, they split up to return to their dorms. Liv walked through the old cemetery. Someone hit her from behind, then everything went black, and she died. Liv is still stuck at Wickham, invisible to everyone...except for Gabe. Gabe is a fellow scholarship student, and her work study partner. They became so close that Gabe had confided in her that he could see dead people, that he sees them all over Wickham Hall. At the time, Liv thought that he was crazy. Now she knows that he was telling the truth.

Liv's first priority is telling Malcolm that she is still around. Now that she is dead, any interaction with the physical world makes her fade. She enlists Gabe to help contact Malcolm, which goes over as well as you would think when the weird kid at school tells you that he's been talking to your dead girlfriend. Eventually, Gabe and Liv get him to believe that Gabe is the ghost whisperer and is talking to Liv. The three then focus on solving Liv's murder.

What they encounter is a conspiracy that has been going on for decades. The dead girls all over Wickham were all victims of the conspiracy. They were all scholarship students, and the murders all trace back to the Victors.  

I very much enjoyed Liv, Forever. Liv was a cool girl, and I loved her and Malcolm together. They do get into Ghost-level stuff after she dies. It's a little bit romantic, but those sorts of things really bum me out more than anything else. I also liked how the ghost girls were given a little characterization. Each of them got a chapter from their perspective that told a little about them and how they were killed. The book was romantic, a little bit scary, and there was a bit of humor, and a large amount of bittersweet.  

I received my copy of Liv, Forever from the Goodreads First Reads Program and from Edelweiss, courtesy of Soho Teen. It's available for purchase now.