The drowned

From Booklist Gr. 7^-12. While spending a boring summer with her aunt, Lily devises a tour of Atlantic City's haunted side to make some money and soon finds herself enmeshed in the grim story of a drowned teenage boy and the "Drowned Boy's Bed." A con artist and petty thief named Clark DeLuge becomes Lily's betrayer and her savior as she plunges into the mystery. It's apparent fairly early that Clark is the ghostly drowned boy, who, it turns out, returns every summer thanks to his demented mother's ritual drowning of a teenager. This year, the victim is to be Lily. Lily, who begins as a fairly strong character, gradually becomes less interesting, but Clark's mother remains a convincing, truly creepy image of maternal instinct gone bad. The plot doesn't always hold together, and Lily's romantic angst in the final pages isn't believable. Still, this supernatural potboiler will be an easy booktalk, and it will add a little dimension to collections saturated with series horror titles. Janice Del Negro