the taking of jake livingston by ryan douglass

Suddenly, everything Jake knows about dead world goes out the window as Sawyer begins to haunt him. Now he’s a powerful, vengeful ghost and he has plans for Jake. In life, Sawyer was a troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school before taking his own life. Though most ghosts are harmless and Jake is always happy to help them move on to the next place, Sawyer Doon wants much more from Jake. Unfortunately, life as a medium is getting worse. Clair start looking up with the arrival of another Black student-the handsome Allister-and for the first time, romance is on the horizon for Jake. Both are a living nightmare he wishes he could wake up from. But he can’t decide what’s worse: being a medium forced to watch the dead play out their last moments on a loop or being at the mercy of racist teachers as one of the few Black students at St. Sixteen-year-old Jake Livingston sees dead people everywhere.

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ryan Douglass and a few other authors in a roundtable entitled “ Where is the Queer Black Male Voice in YA?” The interviewees were all obvious rising stars, in my opinion, but the very next queer Black male voice to rise up in YA after that post actually belonged to an author I didn’t know yet named Julian Winters.įast forward to now, when Douglass has debuted on the New York Times bestseller list (and also managed to publish a volume of poetry called Boy in Jeopardy even before that), Winters is three books in with a fourth, Right Where I Left You, on the way, and both of them are here today to talk about The Taking of Jake Livingston.

The taking of jake livingston by ryan douglass