The storytelling style and motifs are in keeping with de Lint’s adult fiction. It is reassuring that not everything ends well some triumphs are offset by sadness and parting. Though some of the references are anachronistic, and the dialogue is occasionally unrealistically high-toned, de Lint generally has a decent grasp of his adolescent characters and milieu. Within this urban fantasy context, de Lint deals with issues of bullying and self-esteem without sugarcoating the realities of adolescent life. When Imogene befriends Ghost, she is introduced to a spirit otherworld, where creatures of darkness feed on the soulful light given off by people like her and Maxine. She quickly befriends Maxine, a fellow outcast, and draws the attention not only of the school’s fashionable elite (who delight in tormenting her and Maxine) but also of Ghost, the unhappy spectre of Adrian, who apparently killed himself at the school several years before. She’s a girl with a past: good at heart, with admirable pluck and an eclectic fashion sense, but a history of discipline problems (including gang affiliation) at her old school. Imogene is the new girl at Redding High School, having moved to Newford, a town that will be familiar to readers of de Lint’s adult novels. With The Blue Girl, Ottawa fantasy writer Charles de Lint has written his first young adult novel since 1991’s The Dreaming Place.
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