Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Cherie Dimaline can do no wrong. I love everything this author writes and this book was just as amazing and poweful as every other

What drew me to this title was my past experience with Dimaline's novels. I adore the Marrow Thieves and its sequel, as well as fell for the tingle-inspiring sinister notes of Empire of Wild. While each book is unique in its own right, I knew that something special would happen here and I was right.

FSFDG follows a young girl as she comes into her own while yearning for a mother she didn't get to know and fighting for the only place that she believes holds a connection to her. What will happen if she and her father are forced to move away, are forced to begin anew somewhere far from where she hopes the ghost of her mother still inhabits? All questions Wini asks even as she falls for and is ultimately hurt by her best friend.

I have always loved how Dimaline makes her characters multi-faceted: she makes them vulnerable, naïve, strong, they make mistakes, and learn from them. This makes it all the more easier for her readers to fall for them and their story. Winifred is just like any teenage girl, falling in love easily, being disappointed, finding her strength, crying, laughing, and being scared. When a ghost story becomes reality, Wini must decide if she is going to be selfish and only wish to speak with this ghost just to make contact with her mother or will she become what Phil needs to finally finish her story?

This is a story about growing and learning, discovering more than what we can see, and finding friends and love along the way.

Contemporary teen fiction. Coming of age story. It makes me cringe to even think of reading a book with this description; never mind finish it! Lol. But the reality is the added ghost element and a lonely motherless teen who lives on the grounds of a graveyard convinced me that I should read it. Add in that Cherie DiMaline is indigenous herself (as is her main character) and has won many awards; I figured what the heck let’s read it.

Am I glad I read it? Yes.
Would I recommend it? Maybe. For a struggling teen, someone trying to cope with loneliness or anyone whose just lost a loved one this could be a very comforting and cathartic read.
For me, in my current state it was just okay. I see the allure of it and why everyone is ranting and raving about its impact. Alas the reality is that this moment in my life doesn’t need this book. But I’m glad it exists for those who do need it at any given moment.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

Read if you like: books on Indigenous identity, Young Adult
-
Winifred lives in an apartment in a cemetery, where she starts rumours that the cemetery is haunted. But then she meets a real ghost, Phil, who changes her outlook on life.
-
This book was amazing. Cherie Dimaline is an auto-read author and this exploration on Indigenous identity was very interesting. Winifred and Phil were both so interesting in different ways and I really enjoyed this book.

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls was a lovely book on grief, anger, and growing up and how a teenager handles it. We get to watch Winnifred evolve throughout the book from the moment her and her father are threatened with a move to the eventually resolution of the situation. Throughout the book, there is great imagery about how Winnifred lives her life in routine, not really existing, much like she is a ghost. When she's introduced to Phil, we get to see how Phil brings out growth in Winnifred.

Initially, Winnifred wants to utilize Phil to save her home so that her father and her can continue to live in the cemetery, but as time advances and Win and Phil get to know each other, Win has a change of heart and she must stop the ghost tours from hurting her new friend.

I did find this book slow to start off, but around the middle point, when we get more information on Phil and her life before her death, it picked up. I thought that the way Dimaline wove Phil's story into Win's was elegant and poetic and I loved that Phil was able to help Win come to some sure conclusions of herself and give her the confidence to take the next step in her life. The way that Dimaline weaves hard moments into the story was perfect and there were moments that made me tear up and want to cry and moments that were just tender and sweet.

I love the way Cherie Dimaline writes and Funeral Songs for Dying Girls is another gorgeous book. I particularly love her characters, lovely and flawed and broken but full of hope.

I didn't review this on Goodreads because I wasn't wildly enthusiastic - I did like the main character, but felt distanced from her so it was hard to get too invested.

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls is a book about grief and moving on, being able to accept change. This all starts with Winifred, whose mother died giving birth to her. She's been cast as the pariah for living in a cemetery, as her father is a cremation assistant, and she doesn't want to leave the cemetery because her mother's ashes are interred there. When the owner of the cemetery suggests that they're going to wind down operations with the crematorium, Wini jumps at the change provided by a ghost tour guide. If she can provide a real ghost for the tours, money will start rolling in, and she can stay. Then she meets a real live ghost and has to decide if it's worth casting this ghost she's getting close to as the boogeyman.

I really liked this, although it has an incredibly slow start. Winifred tends to focus on the tiniest parts of daily life, and Dimaline doesn't let us really get a sense of her relationship with her father, which would have been helpful. I was also a little shaky on the ghost's story. Otherwise the writing is beautiful and I think the book comes together nicely in the end.

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls is a difficult book to read. Not because the writing is hard, but because the concept is hard.

Winfred lives in a cemetery, because that is where her father works. Her mother died giving birth to her, and her white father keeps her ashes in a suitcase under his bed. Sometimes Win goes out wandering in the cemetary at night, and a few times she has been mistaken for a ghost. The local ghost tour wants to make the cemetery part of his stops, but Windfred has met a real ghost, while wondering, and doesn’t want her to be exploited, even though this would bring in needed money to the cemetery.

And through this all, the ghost tells her stories of her life, and asks what she is. She has no idea. She doesn’t feel she can call herself white, but she knows nothing about her mother’s side of family other than one aunt who was kind to her.

There is a lot of soul searching, and other hard bits going on. Through it all, it makes you think. Recommended for the thinking part. But if you don’t want to think what life and love is, you might not want to dive into this book. Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review

Thanks to Tundra Books and Netgalley for an ARC of this book!

I’m really sad to say this was a DNF for me. I gave it lots of chances, but as I was over 100 pages in with no suggestion of a plot yet, and no characters I felt invested in, I had to let it go.

There seemed to be a distinct drop in writing quality from Dimaline’s other novels. As the author has written one of the best books I’ve ever read (The Marrow Thieves) I was totally shocked to encounter multiple near-incoherent sentences throughout. Dimaline has numerous books coming out this year, and I can’t help but wonder if the quality of this book suffered as a result. I will definitely still be checking out Dimaline’s other books, as I hope this one was a one off mishap rather than the norm.

Maybe someday I’ll give it another go, but certainly not any time soon.

Dimaline captures the complexity of pain beautifully.

There are so many layers to Winifred and this story allows us to experience the pain and honesty head on.

Both the content and writing are amazing.

Thank you to netgalley for providing an e-galley for review. Funeral Songs for Dying Girls tells the story of Winifred. She lives above the graveyard and crematorium where her father works and where her mother is buried. She wanders in the graveyard at night and befriends a ghost. When someone sees her, they think the graveyard is haunted. At turns very funny and heartbreaking, this book is an examination of grief and family.

This was a beautiful and spooky little coming-of-age story.  My favorite part of the was Winnie and Phil’s relationship. Incredibly comforting to see their story of resilience and hope that grows within their connection despite their pasts.
That being said there were issues I had with the cadence of the story-telling it took me quite some time to get into it. On top of that, there were too many fatphobic instances for a modern book.

still thankful to have been able to read this ARC

I am glad that I read this book and found the story quite unique. I felt for Winnie and her father and thought that Dimaline's use of the ghost, Phil, to help Winnie deal with the death of her mother was a beautiful concept. That being said, I found this book to be incredibly slow-moving, which made me less invested overall. I feel that my students will struggle to read it and appreciate such a quiet, character driven story so despite the quality of the writing and the powerful meaning of the story, I doubt that many teens will be able to appreciate it.

I really liked the voice in this book, although some sections did feel a little overwritten. I liked Win a lot, and Phil's sections were fantastic.

The story, though, I'm less sold on. There are plenty of beautiful moments, but the Win/Jack/Phil jealousy thing really annoyed me. I don't think Win and Phil got enough nice moments--they spend too much of the story mad at each other. And I found the ending a little underwhelming.

My overall experience of the book, though, was a positive one. The writing is undeniably beautiful, and I loved Win's perspective as a narrator.

A caveat for anyone considering this book: you should know that there are two really in-your-face instances of using a character's body weight as an indication of their laziness/cruelty/lack of sympathy. It's pretty painful and sticks out in a genre where fatphobia is becoming less and less acceptable.

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls is a beautiful, funny, sad and spooky coming-of-age story.  

Winnifred lives with her dad in an apartment above a cemetery.  She’s a lonely teen about to turn 16 when she befriends the ghost of a murdered Indigenous girl, Phil.

Winnie and Phil are wonderful characters, and I loved the way Dimaline wrote them as complex people who are able to hope, and not girls defined by their heartbreaking pasts.   

Thank you to Netgalley and Tundra Books for my review copy of this book.

2.5/5 Stars

16-year old Winifred lives in the cemetery with her father where he works. When she was younger, she accidently caused people to believe the cemetery was haunted, as they spotted her around the grounds. Now on the brink of shutting down, Winifred must figure out how to save her home before she is forced to leave. Enter a real life ghost, Phil, a teenaged girl who died many years ago.

I enjoyed the heavy focus on family relationships, the exploration of grief and the self-discovery journey but I just did not vibe with this main character, which made it difficult for me to fully immerse myself in the story. I just did not care about what was happening in her life. I also felt that there was a lot of fatphobia in this, which I wasn't a fan of.

This heartbreaking, novel left me in tears, but full of hope for the wonderful protagonist, sixteen-year old Winifred. We follow her over a summer full of humiliation, loss and grief, but also love and a growing understanding of her identity.

Winifred and her dad live in a cemetery; he works at the crematorium. Winifred’s mother had died giving birth to her; Winifred's dad has been mourning for years, and has consequently put a wall between them, leaving her to figure out how to navigate her difficult teen years mostly alone. She did have her mother’s elderly aunt Roberta for some time, who provided love and support till she died, leaving Winifred mourning and at loose ends, as now she had no remaining connection to stories of her mother, an indigenous woman, and her heritage. Roberta’s daughter Penny, though alive, is a spiteful, occasional presence in Winifred’s life.

Winifred had looked forward to the summer to forge a physical connection with Jack, her sole friend from school, which failed miserably, with Jack’s friends humiliating her online.

Then, the cemetery owner was going to let Winifred’s dad go for decreasing cemetery profits.. Winifred has no desire to leave, as her mother’s ashes are in the graveyard, and the cemetery is Winifred’s place of safety, where she wanders at all times of the day and night.

When someone mistakenly thinks she’s a ghost, a man running ghost tours wants to bring people through the cemetery, giving Winifred hope that this will keep her father’s job safe.

Then she meets Phil, a vibrant, young woman with a somewhat spiky personality. And who is a ghost. Winifred, after her initial terror, begins interacting with Phil, learning about Phil’s life, and death.

Winifred initially sees Phil as a way to save her father’s job, and goes so far as asking for Penny’s help. Which Penny does, but in her own way, co-opting much of the first ghost tour so as to highlight the indigenous people possibly buried here, but more importantly, to ensure Penny creates a new revenue stream for herself, to augment her already shady activities as a spiritualist.

Seeing how Penny’s summoning hurts Phil, Winifred must decide what’s more important: protecting the cemetery and her dad’s job, or her ethics and Phil’s physical manifestation?

Winifred has lot to deal with during this book. Her feelings, mistakes and wants are portrayed unapologetically and honestly. Her pain is raw, as is that of Phil's, whose story is pretty sad. Cherie Dimaline is terrific at balancing the conflicting, big emotions of adolescence, and has crafted a powerful, deeply moving story.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Penguin Random House Canada for this ARC in exchange for my review.

I wanted to like this one more. I loved the different topics that were hit on: grief from losing a parent, an absent parent due to grief, messed up family relationships, Native American culture and representation, crossing the line on social media, so many things. At time there was too many things to deal with almost. The social media drama with our main characters best friend felt like it should have been made a bigger deal and should have been a moment with the dad involved. I loved the sweet dad and was glad their relationship was healed over the course of the book. While I enjoyed the narrative and relationship with the friend/ghost it was hard to jump into the ghosts narrative at times. Switching between the two was a not fluid for me. The sexual content was a little much for my taste and there was plenty of foul language. I would recommend this to strong and older readers, but not put on my general HS library shelves in today's climate.

Cherie Dimaline is a season's pass for me. I will ride ALL THE RIDES.

That doesn't mean some of those rides don't make me mildly queasy.

This book is heart-breaking and weirdly uplifting, and tragic and hopeful, and regardless of the book blurb, NOT A GOOD TIME.

The author, though?

Even as you're sobbing, and furious, and anxious, and all-round miserable, she, with her gorgeous prose, deep character insight, and, maybe a little VenCo magical skull-f**ckery? draws you in, stops you from throwing the book into the fire, and makes you fall in love.

Read this book with lots of tissues and your support animal nearby.

Your face will be red and blotchy but you'll be better for it.

8/10

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin House Publishing Canada for this ARC.