I picture Abbey on the stage in front of a large audience accepting some award. Her first words?
“I couldn’t have done it without my friends.”
If there’s a theme running through all three of the Abbey novels, it’s that things are never quite as scary when you’ve got a friend at your side.
But first, here’s how we got here.
Spook Squad is the third book in the Abbey series after Abnormally Abbey and Class Clown. For those unfamiliar with Abbey, she is a teen gifted/cursed with the ability to interact with the dead. Ghosts have come to her since childhood, but it’s not as glamorous as it sounds. Life can get scary when the dead intrude.
Abnormally Abbey introduces readers to 14-year-old Abbey Hill. With her father going on assignment, she finds herself at a summer camp in River Falls, Wisconsin. Nothing goes to plan from there. Her father registered Abbey for the wrong camp, and she finds herself at a boot camp for troubled teens. When a mysterious symbol haunts her, Abbey sets out to solve the mystery with her quirky roommate, Stacia, alpha female Carrie, and love interest, Turner.
Class Clown picks up right afterward as Abbey starts high school. Abbey joins the school soccer team to continue the fitness she gained at the boot camp. “How hard can it be to kick a ball?” But the halls of Pine Ridge High School are soon overrun with clowns. And then two of her new teammates go missing. These are ghost clowns (dead clowns are everyone’s nightmare) and are coming to Abbey for a reason. With the help of her new friends, Lexi and Kelly, Abbey must figure out why to save her missing friends.
Now, in Spook Squad, Abbey’s ability has attracted the wrong sort of attention.
That attention arrives in the form of a domineering federal agent who insists that Abbey help her with artifacts that can gather and focus otherworldly energy. The agent warns that if these “spirit boxes” were to fall into the wrong hands, it would be a disaster of biblical proportions.
Enlisting her ride-or-dies, Abbey, Kelly, and Lexi search some of the most haunted places in Minnesota. She also has help from Stacia and Carrie, as well as Turner and her lawyer friend, Brian Thompson. In Abnormally Abbey, Brian was literally a lifesaver.
“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
As Elbert Hubbard said in the above quote, a friend is someone who accepts you as you are—ghosts included. It was important to me to include friends and a loving support system in this series. In the real world, being with someone who has your back is the key to happiness. (Along with coffee, dogs and soccer.)
“I love these girls. Without question or concern for consequences, Lexi and Kelly are willing to skip out of school to help. I’d be lost without my friends. But for much of my life, I hadn’t really had any. The ones I had disappeared quicker than a Twinkie at a weight watcher’s meeting when they discovered what I could do. But I get that it can be more than a little creepy to know your friend sees dead people.”
“I realized this was right where I should be. With friends who know all my dirty little secrets and fully embrace my unusual abilities.”
At the heart of Spook Squad—and the entire Abbey series—is the power of friendship. Abbey may have an extraordinary gift, but it’s the support of her friends that truly gets her through the toughest moments. Whether she’s facing ghostly clowns, recovering dangerous artifacts, or being coerced by a federal agent, Abbey’s ride-or-dies are always there to help, no questions asked. Because with friends who understand and accept you, even when you see dead people, nothing is as scary as it seems.
Ready to join Abbey and her crew on their next supernatural adventure? Grab your copy of Spook Squad and discover how true friendship makes all the difference.