Funny ‘Spooky Little Girl’ a paranormal mystery

Lucy Fisher has lots of plans for straightening out her life — too bad she’s dead — but that’s not going to stop her from trying to make a difference.

In Laurie Notaro’s hysterical novel “Spooky Little Girl,” death truly becomes Lucy as her stint as a fledgling ghost will mean the difference between going to her heavenly reward and being stuck in limbo.

Lucy’s life fell apart when she came home from her pre-wedding Hawaiian honeymoon for herself. She finds all her belongings scattered outside her fiance’s home and she is being accused of embezzlement at work.

With her life seemingly in the toilet, Lucy flees to her sister’s home in Flagstaff, only to wind up on the losing end of an argument with a city bus. When she comes to, Lucy is shocked to find out that she’s dead — and enrolled in ghost school — where she learns she'll have to go back and make a difference in order to go on to the next phase of the afterlife.

So, with a little help from her dearly departed grandma, Lucy takes up residence at her former boyfriend’s house, where Lucy is determined that she may be gone, but she certainly isn’t going to be forgotten.

Part mystery/part paranormal and a whole lot of fun, “Spooky Little Girl” is one of the cutest ghost stories I’ve encountered in a long time. Notaro’s wicked sense of humor shines through in this creative tale that is just a juicy, delicious delight to read.