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Literature / Jessica's Ghost

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For all the Jessicas
and the people who loved them.
— The original edition's dedication

Jessica's Ghost (known as Friends for Life in the United States) is a children's novel by Andrew Norriss, released in 2015.

Francis is sitting alone on a bench one school day, when a girl he's never met before named Jessica walks up to him. It turns out she's a ghost, and Francis is the first person she's met who can see her. The two quickly become friends, which leads to Francis' life becoming a whole lot brighter...


Jessica's Ghost contains examples of:

  • Bittersweet Ending: Jessica ascends to the afterlife, but she changed Francis, Andi, and Roland's lives for the better, and the three are still close friends.
  • By the Eyes of the Blind: Jessica wonders why Francis is the only person who can see her. Turns out Andi and Roland can, too, and the latter figures out why: all three of them have been suicidal, and Jessica's final purpose is to stop other teenagers from committing suicide like she did.
  • Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Justified. Jessica can instantly change her clothes at will because she's a ghost.
  • Disappeared Dad: It's mentioned that Francis' father died in a paragliding accident, but it's never explained what happened to Andi's or Roland's fathers.
  • Ghost Amnesia: Downplayed. Jessica can't remember how she died at first, and whenever she tries to remember, she teleports back to the hospital where her body was taken. After she learns she committed suicide, her memories flood back.
  • Googling the New Acquaintance: After Roland meets Jessica, he googles her name to find out how she died.
  • Magic Realism: This is a mostly mundane slice-of-life story where one of the main characters is a ghost. It's left ambiguous if other ghosts exist in this world.
  • Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Francis is an introverted boy who's interested in fashion, while Andi is an athletic girl with a Tomboyish Name who used to think she was a boy, according to her mother.
  • Mundane Solution: Roland (who's into the supernatural) finds out how Jessica died by searching her name on Google.
  • Secondary Character Title: The book is named after Jessica, but the story follows Francis the most as he learns to open up to people and make friends.
  • Suicide by Pills: It turns out that Jessica committed suicide by running into the woods and overdosing on unspecified pills.
  • Tomboyish Name: Due to her name, Francis assumes that Andi is a boy before he meets her.

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