Leaf Clan

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And basically, in this world there's magic and stuff and whenever people die, if they have unfinished business on the world, their soul gets tethered to the person they have unfinished business with and they float above them on an invisible tether. Xhea is this girl with the ability to sever ghosts from their people, so people go to her if they need help getting a ghost off their back.

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This guy comes along with a young girl's ghost about 16-years-old attached to him, and he doesn't know what to do, whether he wants to keep her around or get rid of her or kill her (unexplained reasons why at the moment) and Xhea makes him a deal, where she would attach the girl's thread to her soul for two days and let the man decide whether he wants to take her back or not (Xhea suspects she might be his daughter), and so she does and he promises to return in two days.

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The girl ghost, named Shai, reminds me SO MUCH of G, she's quiet and skittish but when she talks she can sometimes get on the nerves of Xhea, and it's just like, it's scary how similar they are.

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So I thought, what if I took a small section of the book and replaced their names with Bael and G? just to see what would happen.

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"What . . ." the ghost said, then faltered into silence. A moment later, she tried again: "Why . . . why am I here?"

"That was the deal," Bael said, turning to look at the ghost over her shoulder. The world spun at the movement. "Nothing personal, I assure you."

She turned down a side street, slipping between low apartments. Their ground levels had been reinforced or disguised to look abandoned: doors bricked or boarded over, windows clouded from untold years of dirt. Higher, the ruse had been abandoned. Warning chimes and fluttering prayer flags hung from balconies, while a line of laundry strung between two buildings was heavy with dripping clothes—all pinned too securely to be dislodged with a thrown rock.

"Deal?" Guitar asked. "I was just sleeping. And now . . ." The ghost looked down, apparently just realizing that she inhabited a space without gravity, hovering five feet from the ground and skimming forward without walking.

"Oh," said Bael. "That. You're dead."

"I can't be," she whispered, peering over her crossed legs and watching the pavement speed by. "No. I'm just asleep."

Great, Bael thought. A talker. She had seemed so quiet at first, so serene; Bael had thought that she might dream away her death in silence. It would have made things so much easier. Perhaps this was why the man had wanted to get rid of her—a sense that an unseen presence was doing her best to talk his ear off.

Well, she had only committed to a day, perhaps two, and then she could let the tether go. The girl would catapult back to her original anchor and be out of Bael's hair—unless, of course, the man wanted to pay her significantly more.

"I'm asleep," Guitar insisted. "Only asleep."

"Then this must be a very bad dream."

Bael made her way through the Lower City core and out toward the edges where the buildings fell in slow surrender to the surrounding ruins. After a few more protests, largely ignored, Guitar fell into an uneasy silence. She made no attempt to propel herself forward, leaving Bael to drag her by her tether like a rock on a string.

Just a City girl, Bael thought, glancing back at the ghost. She’d probably spent the whole of her life in the Towers, never looking down, never considering what lay on the ground below or all the lives scratched out in the dirt and ruin. Then again, few even from the Lower City chose to leave the core; out in the ruins beyond, Bael felt that she had the whole world to herself, a wide space that held only the memory of people and the echoes of her footsteps. Here the infrastructure was succumbing to rot and the slow erosion of rain and wind and time. Buildings sagged where they hadn’t fallen entirely. Even the clearest streets were strewn with rubble, bits of lives—of a time—that even history had forgotten.

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Tell me I'm not the only one who sees the similarities and isn't going crazy.

Holy crap; that's scary! I'm amazed by how close Xhea and Shai resemble our characters, but also frightened by the similarity LOL. Ahhh I have to get this book now ;w; The plotline seems like something I would love omg