ALA Booklist (Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 2003)

Seventeen-year-old Catherine is visiting her grandmother in Pasadena, where everyone hopes she will recover from the shock and guilt over a friend's death in an auto accident. Enter Noah, aka the Presence. As readers learn from alternating chapters, in the voices of Noah and Catherine, this handsome young man tempts Catherine by telling her he has made contact with her deceased friend. She thinks he is a psychic, but readers quickly learn he is a ghost, one with a history of luring girls who look remarkably like Catherine to his room in a church and killing them. This is fine for what it is, a chilling little ghost story, handily turned by a veteran writer. Despite Bunting's skill, however, don't look too closely; there are coincidences galore. Catherine, who at one point laughs at characters in thrillers who open a door when they know they shouldn't, does exactly that. The climax, in which Noah returns to life only to die again, is too brief to be satisfying, but there's a hint of a sequel. Not everyone thinks he's dead.

Horn Book (Thu Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 2004)

Consumed by guilt over the accidental death of her best friend, Catherine spends Christmas vacation in California with her grandmother. The teenager is wooed by Noah, a ghost who resides in a church basement and preys on vulnerable young women. Though Noah's character is unconvincing, and the conclusion--in which Catherine hopes to rescue another of his victims--is ultimately disappointing, the well-paced story is readable.

Kirkus Reviews

Emotional depth resonates as 17-year-old Catherine fights off two kinds of haunting. Wracked with guilt and nightmares over a car accident that killed her best friend, Catherine goes to visit her warm and sparkly grandmother in Pasadena for a change of scene; however, in her grandmother's church, she's confronted by a dazzling, eerie man who's a ghost from the 19th century. Half the narration is in his disturbed, stalker-like voice, so readers know his horrifying murderous history long before Catherine does, but suspense remains about the outcome. Bunting's tight and compelling writing gives relentless emotional pain (a form of haunting indeed) as much play as physical danger. New friend/romance Collin, the minister's son, provides Catherine with fleeting bits of joy and a feeling of solidity from his realness. She is not free of burden by the end, but there is hope. Memorable. (Fiction. 12+)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

As Bunting's (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Spying on Miss Müller) supernatural novel opens, the ghost of a 17-year-old who died 120 years earlier stands on the stairs of a California church, waiting for 17-year-old Catherine, who is spending Christmas with her grandmother while her parents travel in Europe. Noah, who now identifies himself as "The Presence," appears to be searching for a soul mate and believes Catherine is "the one." Grappling with grief and guilt over the death of her friend Kirsty (killed in a late-night car accident as the two were driving home from a party), Catherine is shocked and intrigued when Noah tells her that he has communicated with Kirsty and can arrange to have her talk to Kirsty as well. Through Catherine's and Noah's alternating narratives, the author reveals—in carefully measured doses—details of his nefarious past as well as of the accident that claimed Kirsty's life. Occasionally chilling passages describe the ghost's former exploits with other young women, most of whom have disappeared. But one intended victim, who escaped his clutches and is now quite elderly, shares her old diary with Catherine, enabling her to thwart The Presence's plans for her. Though the heroine's survival is never in question, crisp writing and questions that remain unanswered till tale's end will likely keep fans of ghost stories engaged. Ages 11-up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Sept.)

School Library Journal

Gr 6-10-Seventeen-year-old Catherine, seriously depressed after a tragic accident in which she was injured and her closest friend died, is visiting her grandmother in Pasadena, CA. She is hopeful that the peace of Grandma's beloved St. Matthew's Church will help rest her tortured mind, but they are both unaware that an evil presence lives in the basement of the church-one of the undead who intends to claim Catherine as his own. Although the teen is intrigued and hopeful that the handsome stranger who appears only to her really can help her channel the dead, she is repulsed by the coldness of the air surrounding him and his icy touch. Warning bells in her mind intensify as an elderly woman warns her to stay away and she learns that a number of girls have disappeared from town over the years, and they all looked very much like her. Is this ghostly stranger real, or is Catherine having a complete nervous breakdown? Bunting, long a favorite of teen thrill seekers, has produced another winner in this well-written story of acute loneliness, alienation, romance, the occult, hope, and tragedy. Fans of the genre will surely pass it from friend to friend, and it's a natural for reluctant readers.-Susan Riley, Mount Kisco Public Library, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.