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Deadgirl is the debut novel by young adult author B.C. Johnson. It follows the story of Lucy Day, a fifteen-year-old girl who goes out on her first date and ends up shot dead in a parking lot. Until she wakes up the next morning right as rain. Sort of. As it turns out, it gets a lot harder to survive after you've already died. Who knew?
Not related to the film of the same name. Probably.
Tropes used in Deadgirl (novel) include:
- The Bechdel Test
- Cessation of Existence: The next step for Phantoms, unless they can somehow avoid it.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Daphne.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Puck to a degree. Also revealed at the end: Daphne.
- Final Death: What Lucy is desperately trying to avoid. What she sends Abraham to in order to do that.
- First-Episode Resurrection
- First-Person Smartass: Lucy. This isn't at all surprising, given the author.
- The Grim Reaper: Everybody has their own personal one, usually referred to as a Mors.
- Hair of Gold: Lucy's gorgeous best friend Morgan.
- The Hero Dies: In the prologue. But if you didn't suspect that from the title...
- Life Energy
- Meaningful Name: Abraham. Robin Goodman.
- Mundane Afterlife: The Grey, sort of. Mundane, yes, afterlife... well, it's not quite that permanent.
- Our Ghosts Are Different
- Our Souls Are Different
- Psychic Powers: Part and parcel of coming back strong.
- Pyrrhic Victory: In the end, Lucy defeats Abraham, meaning she's essentially achieved a type of Immortality, but Zack sacrifices his feelings for Lucy to give her the essence she needs to fight, Morgan is shattered by her role in Abraham's demise, and Lucy's relationship with her parents might be damaged beyond repair.
- Rape as Drama: Attempted and completed both come up once or twice each.
- Resurrective Immortality: Phantoms, as long as they remember to eat and don't get caught by their Mors. It's somewhat conditional immortality, but even Superman has kryptonite.
- Shrinking Violet: Wanda.
- Tall, Dark and Handsome: Zack.
- Vampiric Draining: How Phantoms stay "alive." When they go too long without... "eating," first they start to freeze and develop an Undeathly Pallor, then they begin to fade, becoming both intangible and invisible. And then...
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Lucy spends a lot of time analyzing the reasons why she can't be a ghost, or a vampire, or a zombie. As it turns out, the movies were wrong.