Proposal: A Mediator Novella
By Meg Cabot
4/5
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About this ebook
The short story Mediator fans everywhere have been waiting years to read… a fun, fast-paced, never-before-read scene in which Suze Simon agrees to marry her no-longer-dead ghost boyfriend, Jesse de Silva!
The last place Suze Simon expects to find herself during Valentine’s Day is a cemetery. But that’s what happens when you’re a mediator—cursed with the “gift” of communicating with the dead.
That’s how Suze has ended up at the graves of a pair of tragic young lovers. They’re NCDPs—Non-Compliant Deceased Persons—whose drama didn’t end with death. It’s Suze’s job to make sure they move on—for good.
But the NCDPs aren’t the only ones with problems. The reason Suze is spending her Valentine’s Day with the undead instead of her boyfriend, Jesse, is because he’s having so much trouble adjusting to life after death . . . not surprising, considering the fact that he used to be an NCDP himself, and now his girlfriend busts his former kind for a living.
Can Suze use her mediating skills to propose a mutual resolution, and bring all these young lovers together, especially on the night Saint Valentine declared sacred to romance? Or will she end up alone—and possibly undead—herself?
An Avon Romance
Meg Cabot
Meg Cabot was born in Bloomington, Indiana. Her more than eighty books for both adults and teens have included multiple #1 New York Times bestsellers, selling over twenty-five million copies worldwide. They have been made into numerous films and television series, the most well-known of which is The Princess Diaries. She currently lives in Key West with her husband and various cats.
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Reviews for Proposal
49 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I had forgotten how much I love this series. Can't wait to read the last book!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I was ridiculously excited to hear that Ms. Cabot was giving us a prequel novella to tide us over until Suze and Jesse's new novel, Remembrance, comes out next month. Since the semester is still six days away, I dropped everything to read Proposal today.Proposal did not disappoint--Suze and Jesse are back, and they're just as adorable together as always! Suze hasn't changed all that much, though she's gotten older--she's still a bit too impulsive and quick to jump to conclusions, though I suppose she wouldn't quite be Suze if she weren't. Once again, though, it's getting her into trouble. Jesse's still not going to let her get away with much, and fortunately, he also still knows when it's time to step in and help save her butt.Even more fortunately, now he's corporeal. :)It was fun to catch a quick glimpse into what the rest of Suze's family is up to--I can't say that I ever really thought much about what her three stepbrothers would be doing now (okay, maybe David. David was freaking adorable from his first scene to his last), but have to admit that where they all end up makes perfect sense from what I remember of them. I can't wait to actually "see" them back on the page, along with her mom, stepdad, and Father Dom.Proposal does a great job of setting up Remembrance, giving us a taste of what it'll be like to be back in Suze and Jesse's world, and hinting at some of the drama that is to come in the full-length installment. If you haven't read the first six books in the series yet, no worries--as she did in each of the other series books, Suze gives a quick recap of what her life as a mediator is like; it should allow you to navigate her world without too much confusion.Though you know, the quick fix to that situation is to read the first six books, pronto. You've got, oh, just under two weeks to get it done ;)Rating: 4 stars / B+
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One of the new updates to the series! There's a difference in tone - a big jump from young YA to adult fiction.This novella, set a few years into the future from the end of book 6, tells how Jesse proposes to Suze (or how she proposes to herself, really). Jesse is a med student and Suze is a psychology student. Of course a few ghosts get in the way of the proposal.As for the whole series, it's pretty good chick lit/YA.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary: Suze knew that this Valentine's Day wasn't going to be the best - her boyfriend Jesse is four hours away at med school - but she wasn't prepared for how bad it could really be. First off, she starts the evening in a cemetery, dealing with a recently-deceased young man who doesn't take kindly to Suze's accusations that he killed his girlfriend. Next, she inadvertently sets the now-murderous ghost against the mourning cousin of the dead girl. Then she accidentally discovers that Jesse was planning to propose, causing that to go horribly wrong as well. Can Suze save the living boy, mediate the dead one, and smooth things over with Jesse, all in a single night?Review: My main issue with this short story was that it felt strangely unanchored in time. Or, not unanchored, exactly, but the original books were set in the mid-to-late 90s, and only 4 or 5 years are supposed to have passed in the chronology of the storyline, but this story is clearly set in the 2010s, so I had a vague sense of cognitive dissonance throughout. The mystery that's in the background of this story was pretty good, but the main emotional conflict of the plot - Suze's refusal of Jesse's proposal - felt contrived; she had no clear reason to refuse him other than to create drama. Suze's college roommates were not particularly well developed, and felt more like caricatures rather than characters, but at least they were new, in the realistic way that people meet new people during college - something definitely missing from the following book. Overall this was, like the rest of the series, a fun and quick read, although not long enough to be particularly well developed in terms of characters or plot. 4 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: A cute story, and a good appetizer for the book following it (although it doesn't really explain Jesse's backstory well enough to be stand-alone), but it's not essential reading if you just want to focus on the main series books.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In keeping with the tone of the series, there is little that is romantic this proposal, but it still manages to be satisfying.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It's Valentine's Day and Suze is hanging out in a cemetery. What else is new? Well, Suze is all grown up but still having to deal with spirits that refuse to move on. In this case, the spirit is a young boy who died in a car crash along with his girlfriend. Everyone thinks the boy wrecked the car on purpose, but the spirit has a different tale to tell and is seeking revenge. Now Suze needs to stop the ghost from killing the real killer and also bring the killer to justice so the spirit can rest. And an unexpected visit from her boyfriend adds a complication she did not see coming.I am so glad to see Suze again. This novella is the set up for the next book in the Mediator series, Remembrance. I really enjoyed seeing how things had changed, and not changed, since Suze was in high school. You don't need to read this to read Remembrance, but come on, who can resist.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pretty good book but this chick is starting to get annoying. I almost think she's better for Paul after all.
Book preview
Proposal - Meg Cabot
Contents
Dear Reader
Uno
Dos
Tres
Cuatro
Cinco
Seis
Siete
Ocho
Nueve
Diez
Once
Doce
An Excerpt from Remembrance
Uno
Dos
About the Author
Also by Meg Cabot
Copyright
About the Publisher
DEAR READER,
I can’t thank you enough for reading this, the first e-novella installment to a book series I created some time ago.
But don’t worry if you missed any of Suze Simon’s previous progress reports.
After all, they took place in high school. And who wants to relive high school?
Except that it was in high school when Suze first encountered the love of her life, Jesse de Silva. It took a miracle to bring them together, and now that they’re adults, they’ve sworn that nothing will ever tear them apart.
Or will it?
If there’s one thing I’ve learned since high school, it’s that life is full of miracles . . . and surprises, like that a book series I wrote so long ago would have had such a lasting impact on the lives of so many, especially my own. And for that, I’ll never stop being thankful.
So thank you so much for reading . . . and please keep on doing so! I promise to deliver a lot more surprises . . . and miracles.
Meg Cabot
Uno
IT WAS VALENTINE’S DAY, and where was I?
Freezing my butt off in a cemetery, that’s where. Romantic, right?
But I had a job to do, and that job required that I sit in the dark on a headstone, and wait for a ghost to show up.
Yeah. That’s the kind of girl I am, unfortunately. Not the candy-and-stuffed-bear kind. The I-see-dead-people kind.
Discomfort from the cold aside, I was actually kind of okay with the situation. Would I have preferred to be at one of those cute little outdoor bistros over on Ocean Ave, snuggling under a heat lamp and sipping champagne while dining on the Valentine’s Day surf and turf special with my one true love?
Of course.
I wouldn’t even have minded being back at the dorm, hanging out at my suite mates’ anti–Valentine’s Day party, swigging cheap vodka and cranberry juice cocktails while making sarcastic comments about the rom-coms we all claimed to hate (but secretly loved, of course).
But me and my one true love? We’d agreed to spend this Valentine’s Day apart.
Hey, it’s all right. We’re mature adults. We don’t need a stupid holiday named after some martyred saint to tell us when to say I love you.
And okay, the last place anyone wants to be on Valentine’s Day is a cemetery. Anyone except spooks, I mean, and those of us who were born with the curse (or gift, depending on how you choose to look at it) of communicating with them.
But I didn’t mind. Monterey’s Cementerio El Encinal was kind of soothing. It was just me, the headstones, and the marine layer rolling in from the Pacific, making it a bit chillier than it had been when I’d gotten there half an hour ago, and a bit more difficult to see the grave I had staked out.
But who cared if my blow-out was turning limp from the humidity, or my nose red from the chill? It wasn’t like I had a date.
Well, with anyone who personally mattered to me.
And I knew this guy was going to show up sooner or later, since he’d done so every night this past week, like clockwork, to the bewilderment—and fear—of the community.
At least when I got home, I’d have a nice cocktail waiting for me.
This guy I was expecting? He had nothing waiting for him—nothing good, anyway.
I just hoped he’d show up before my butt cheeks froze to the headstone I was sitting on. I wished Mrs. J. Charles Peterson III had chosen a softer material than granite to mark her husband’s final resting place. Marble, perhaps. Or cashmere. Cashmere would have been a nice choice, though it probably wouldn’t have lasted long given the harsh elements of the Northern California coast.
When you’ve been in the ghost-busting business as long as I have (twenty-one years), you learn a few things. The first one is, spectral stakeouts are boring.
The second one is, there isn’t anything you can do to entertain yourself during them, because the minute you slip in earbuds to listen to music or watch a video on your iPod or start texting with your boyfriend on your phone (assuming he’ll text back, which, considering mine was born around the time Queen Victoria inherited the throne and thinks modern technology is dehumanizing), whoever—or whatever—it is you’re waiting for is going to show up, hit you over the head, and run off while you were distracted.
Three, if you bring along a thermos containing a delicious warm beverage—coffee or hot chocolate or hot cider spiked with Bacardi—you will have to pee in about fifteen minutes, and the moment you pull down your jeans to do so (apologies, J. Charles), you will, literally, be caught with your pants down.
These are the things they never portray in the dozens of movies and television shows there’ve been over the years about people with my ability. Mediating between the living and the dead is a thankless job, but someone’s got to do it.
I was sitting there wondering why Mrs. J. Charles Peterson III hadn’t installed an eternal flame at her husband’s grave so I could warm my hands (and butt) when I finally saw him—or it—moving through the mist like a wraith.
But he was no wraith. He was your average, ordinary dirtbag NCDP—or Non-Compliant Deceased Person, as those in my trade refer to those who refuse to cross over to the other side.
He headed directly for the grave across from J. Charles Peterson’s. He was so fixated by it, he didn’t so much as glance in my direction.
I couldn’t really blame him. The recently deceased have reason to be preoccupied. They have the whole I-just-died thing going on.
But this guy had more than the fact that he’d recently died on his mind. I knew, because his post-mortem activities had been causing me—and the entire Monterey Bay area—aggravation for days. Even the local news—and several popular media blogs—had commented on it.
Which was why, of course, I was spending my Valentine’s Day sitting on a headstone waiting for him, instead of hanging with my homegirls back at the dorm, drinking Cape Codders and tearing Katherine Heigl a new one.
I watched as the guy—only a few years younger than me, but dressed about the same, in a black tee, leather jacket, and black jeans and boots, as well—bent and removed the fresh flowers that had been lovingly placed on the grave in front of him. Today’s batch were red, and, in honor of the holiday, arranged in a heart shape.
True, as floral arrangements went, they weren’t to my taste. I’d have gone for something more classic—a dozen long-stemmed roses, perhaps. Definitely nothing Valentine’s themed. That seemed a little gauche to me.
Of course, I hope not to be dead for a long, long time, and when I am, I doubt I’ll care what anyone puts on my grave. Also, I want to be cremated, so it won’t be an issue.
But I still wouldn’t have done what that no-good NCDP did, which was rude, regardless of how objectionable he found the floral design:
He lifted the heart arrangement off the grave, tossed it in the air, then drop-kicked it, causing it to explode into a gentle hailstorm of petals.
Nice,
I said. Very nice, mature behavior. I’m sure your mother would be proud.
The NCDP whirled around, startled.
What the hell!
His eyes were as round as if he, not me, were the one seeing a ghost. "What are you—how can you—who are you?"
I’m Suze Simon,
I said. And you thought being dead was bad? Buddy, your eternal nightmare’s only just begun.
Dos
EVERYBODY’S GOT A secret.
Maybe you’ve told a lie. Maybe you cheated on a test. Maybe—like the Non-Compliant Deceased Person standing in front of me—you’ve killed someone (I really hope not, for your sake).
The thing about secrets, though, is that they get out. And trust me, if you’ve got a secret, eventually, it’s going to get out.
And when it does, things are probably going to turn out to be okay . . . well, after some counseling, or at worst, some jail time, or—if you’re a celebrity—maybe a tell-all book with a couple of talk show appearances thrown in, to apologize to your disappointed fans.
Not this guy’s secret, though.
And not mine, either. All the counseling, jail time, and TV talk shows in the world are never going to make my secret okay. My secret is the kind that religious leaders in every culture in every society in the world have railed against at one time or another, claiming that it’s an abomination, unnatural, the work of the devil. Throughout history, women with my secret have been burned at the stake, drowned, or pelted with stones until they were dead. The scientific community has declared my secret incompatible with the well-established laws of science,
and therefore nonexistent.
Which is why, of course, writers (and producers,