While I’m not much of a YA reader, I enjoyed the predecessor to this book, An Unauthorised Fan Treatise, which the author published online, so thoughtWhile I’m not much of a YA reader, I enjoyed the predecessor to this book, An Unauthorised Fan Treatise, which the author published online, so thought this might be fun. And Last Seen Online IS fun, albeit overstuffed and lacking any particularly strong characters. It would feel mean-spirited to do a deep dive into the problems here, given that I’m not the target audience, but I will say that personally I had a better time with the original story....more
A fun and cute YA take on the podcast thriller, with two friends reinvestigating the 1999 disappearance of a local girl for a journalism project. The A fun and cute YA take on the podcast thriller, with two friends reinvestigating the 1999 disappearance of a local girl for a journalism project. The characterisation is very broad-brush, the bad guys glaringly obvious from the start, and the social justice talking points (mostly delivered via implausible lecture-like dialogue from a character who seems to have been created entirely for this purpose) about as subtle as a sledgehammer – but to be fair, I am not the target audience for this book. And when Clarissa’s contemporaries get their chance to talk about her, there are some beautifully written passages about youth, nostalgia, potential and small-town life. This was a nice easy read for a long journey, though I doubt I’ll read the sequel....more
I don’t read many kids’ books, but I’m usually happy to make an exception for ghost stories. I like ghost stories best when they’re relatively simple I don’t read many kids’ books, but I’m usually happy to make an exception for ghost stories. I like ghost stories best when they’re relatively simple and free of gore, which those for young readers obviously have to be. The central narrative of Thirteen Chairs concerns a boy, Jack, walking into a dark old house; he sits down with a group of strangers, each of whom tells a spooky story. Highlights are ‘Tick, Tick, Tick...’ (M.R. James-lite about a professor hearing a phantom clock), ‘Beneath the Surface’ (grief-stricken boy haunted by water – shades of Junji Ito and Stephen King) and, best of all, ‘Unputdownable’ (writer can’t stop writing – by far the most original premise in the book). The flaws – a couple of stories are extremely predictable, another couple are told in irritatingly childish voices – are things that go with the territory and only bothered me because I’m not the intended reader. Not my favourite of the genre (that would probably be The Wrong Train by Jeremy de Quidt); good fun all the same.
The first time I started reading Belzhar, I didn't seriously intend to finish it. In faPandemic rereads #2*
This is the story of the worst book I love.
The first time I started reading Belzhar, I didn't seriously intend to finish it. In fact, I was reading it as a joke, because I had heard a lot about how bad it was. I expected to read a sample, laugh at how terrible it was, and move on. Instead, I connected with it almost instantly. I found myself interested enough to keep reading. And I finished it, and I had to admit to myself that I'd really liked it. There were parts I'd read back over repeatedly and copied down into a notebook. When I recently read an adult novel (Catherine House) that captures some of the same feelings I got from Belzhar, I was compelled to go back and reread it, properly, again.
This is a YA novel about a girl called Jam. I love the way it begins: I was sent here because of a boy. His name was Reeve Maxfield, and I loved him and then he died, and almost a year passed and no one knew what to do with me. Jam is 15, and Reeve, a British exchange student, is her first love. But, as those first few sentences tell us, he dies suddenly and she enters a lengthy depressive episode, refusing to get out of bed or speak to anyone. After months of this, her parents decide to send her to The Wooden Barn, a school in Vermont which markets itself as a sort of retreat for 'emotionally fragile, highly intelligent' young people.
'Belzhar' is a play on the title of Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar, which becomes a key text for Jam during her time at The Wooden Barn. But the most relevant Plath reference is her poem 'Mad Girl's Love Song', which is so pertinent that I feel like it might've been the inspiration for the whole thing. Meanwhile, the plot roughly resembles a junior version of The Secret History: Jam and four other students are recruited to the exclusive 'Special Topics in English' class; their mysterious, eccentric teacher encourages them to write about themselves in antique notebooks. They find that the act of doing so results in short, intense visions – or, possibly, supernatural experiences – in which they seem to return to life before their trauma.
I connected with Belzhar and Jam almost immediately. I was around Jam's age when I first experienced depression and suicidal ideation, and like her, these problems initially manifested around my feelings for a boy. Being 'in love' consumed my entire self and took me to some very dark places. So I found the power of her feelings and her sustained period of grief entirely believable. There's a large plot twist near the end of the book, one many readers hate and some find distasteful, since it reveals Jam's 'trauma' as trivial in comparison to her classmates'. My reaction was different: I find Jam's story emotionally powerful precisely because of this twist, and I felt more sorry and sad for her when it was revealed. The truth drags her loneliness into the light, and that's what packs the emotional punch for me.
I like the fact that the teenagers in Belzhar are realistic teenagers. Despite being chosen for an elite class, the Special Topics students don't behave like the precocious, emotionally mature, world-weary and cynical teens so often found in YA media. They're moody, uncooperative and awkward. Their discussion of Plath is basic and shallow, yet it helps them begin to understand themselves. They're fucked-up 15-year-olds, not postgrads, and they act like it.
There are still things about the story that I find silly. There's no explanation of how exactly The Wooden Barn operates as a school for 'troubled' teens when said teens receive no actual therapy or treatment. The supposedly 'typically British' details of Reeve's character are ridiculous (though, given the nature of the twist, I think an argument can be made that this is deliberate). But over time, even the edges of these things have been softened, and I can look at them from an affectionate distance, accepting that while they're maybe not very good choices, they don't actually make the book bad for me.
I love it, in spite of the flaws. I see my teen self reflected in it, and I find it recognisable and real both in a very general sense (memories are always a story we tell ourselves) and in ways extremely specific to me. It's a YA book that was published when I was 30, and it's a book lots of people dislike, but it's a part of me now, and I'll keep going back to it, I'm sure.
* Pandemic reread #1 was Based on a True Story, but as it's only a few years since I first read it, I don't have anything to add to my existing review.
I’m often the first to gripe about novels being labelled as YA fiction just because they have teenage characters in them... but occasionally it's the I’m often the first to gripe about novels being labelled as YA fiction just because they have teenage characters in them... but occasionally it's the other way round. The Migration is packaged as a science fiction novel for an adult audience; it comes garlanded with quotes from the likes of the Guardian and SFX; it has been published by adult literary/SF imprints (Titan Books in the UK, Random House in Canada). And this seems curious to me, because the majority of the book reads like a fantasy adventure for teens, and I feel it would have much greater appeal for younger readers.
The plot centres on a mysterious new condition afflicting young people: Juvenile Idiopathic Immunodeficiency Syndrome (or JI2). 17-year-old Sophie's little sister, Kira, is one of the first to be affected, after a case of chickenpox leaves her immune system weakened. The family move from Toronto to stay with Sophie and Kira's aunt Irene in Oxford, England, where they hope to find better treatment for Kira's condition. Irene is an academic whose research into the Black Death uncovers historical parallels with JI2. We can infer that the story is taking place in a near-future setting, and climate change forms a key part of the backdrop.
I liked the first third, during which the writing reminded me a little of Nina Allan, a high compliment indeed. But the middle third involves so many implausibilities that I began to lose confidence – and interest – in the story. Unfortunately, it had lost me almost entirely by the time the really dramatic stuff started happening, and I only skimmed through to the end because I'd invested quite a lot of time in it up to that point. Neither the fantasy aspect nor Sophie as a character are particularly interesting, and the less said about the unnecessary romantic subplot (another YA hallmark) the better.
(Personal rating would be around 2 stars, but I'm not formally adding it because I think that would be unfair. This was a clear case of book/reader incompatibility, and if it'd been tagged as YA, which I feel would be correct, I'd never have picked it up.)
Sadie is 19 and struggling to come to terms with the death of her 13-year-old sister, Mattie, eight months ago. Mattie's body was found in the ruins oSadie is 19 and struggling to come to terms with the death of her 13-year-old sister, Mattie, eight months ago. Mattie's body was found in the ruins of a burnt-out building; her death wasn't an accident, but the murderer hasn't been identified. The girls' mother, Claire, was a heroin addict who abandoned her daughters a few years earlier. Since then, they've nominally been looked after by a neighbour, but really Sadie has been more of a mother than a big sister to Mattie. When she unearths information that gives her clues to Mattie's killer, she takes off in pursuit of the man she believes is responsible.
Alternate chapters give a very different perspective on Sadie's story. The production team of a podcast have stumbled across her trail while researching a series on small-town America, and one producer is convinced there's a show in it. So the book is partly made up of transcripts from the resulting podcast, titled The Girls, which sees presenter West McCray interviewing those who knew or met Sadie – always a couple of steps behind her.
Sadie is nominally a young adult novel. I wonder how much of that is because the author has an established career and fanbase as a writer of YA fiction, because really this reads just like an adult thriller and lacks a lot of the features I associate with YA. It has a lot of adult characters, the whole plot revolves around the sexual abuse of children, the story is relentlessly downbeat, and there's an open ending that's potentially frustrating. Even what I thought was going to be a romance subplot is quickly dispensed with (mercifully, as it's extremely implausible).
Courtney Summers really knows how to write a cliffhanger. So many of the chapters end with a cut-off scene so startling it's almost impossible to stop yourself reading on. Of the two narratives, I much preferred the podcast extracts – it's this appealing gimmick that drew me to the book in the first place – but Sadie's chapters are undeniably compelling, and the book as a whole is a bona-fide pageturner.
More of a 3.5, but there's enough good stuff here for me to round it up. Think a junior Gillian Flynn for the subject matter, and Matt Wesolowski's Six Stories for the storytelling.
I received an advance review copy of Sadie from the publisher through NetGalley.
Charlie Calloway is a 17-year old with everything. She’s heir to a family fortune and attends an elite private school, Knollwood Augustus Prep. What’sCharlie Calloway is a 17-year old with everything. She’s heir to a family fortune and attends an elite private school, Knollwood Augustus Prep. What’s more, she’s just been invited to join Knollwood’s most exclusive club, a secretive group known as the A’s. (Yes, that's how it’s punctuated in the book and yes, that bloody apostrophe took a few minutes off my life every time I had to look at it.) But Charlie is haunted by the disappearance, and possibly death, of her mother Grace ten years earlier. All These Beautiful Strangers is the story of her quest to discover what really happened to Grace.
The main narrative concentrates on Charlie’s days at Knollwood – the initiation rituals she must take part in to join the A’s; a tentative first romance; rivalries and alliances with other girls – while intermittent flashbacks take us into the history of the Calloways. We get to hear from Charlie’s father, Alistair, as well as the disappeared Grace. These chapters intrigued me most; I often felt I was wading through the Charlie storyline just to get to them. Once it became clear Alistair and Grace’s relationship barely resembled the rose-tinted tale they’d sold Charlie, I had to know what the real story was.
I was interested to see that All These Beautiful Strangers is being marketed as adult fiction in the US and YA in the UK; by my reckoning, the latter is more accurate. While the adults have the more interesting story, the narrative is unfortunately heavy on the social mores of a bunch of rich, obnoxious teens who expect to get into top universities yet seem to take pride in being ignorant. It’s a funny mixture of Gossip Girl and something much more old-fashioned (see: the subplot in which Charlie is persuaded to sign up for the school newspaper and must co-author a story with a scrappy younger boy.) The blurb can mention The Secret History all it likes; Donna Tartt this ain’t.
(I don’t know what Klehfoth has against Sylvia Plath – I can only conclude she was forced to study Ariel at some point and hated it, because there’s a weirdly large number of scenes in which characters either bitch about Plath’s poetry or flippantly dismiss it.) (Also, the character names in this book are utterly ridiculous. There are people called ‘Royce Dalton’ and ‘McKenna St Clare’ and ‘Brighton Maverick’. They're like when someone tries to make a neural network come up with new human names.)
I didn’t believe in these people or their world for a second, but All These Beautiful Strangers was undeniably fun to read. Klehfoth really knows how to construct a twisty plot, how to fashion a cliffhanger that will have you turning the pages as fast as you can read them. It's ridiculous, and it’s also ridiculously enjoyable.
I received an advance review copy of All These Beautiful Strangers from the publisher through Edelweiss.
Having loved the proof-of-concept short film that was made for Apocalypse Now Now earlier this year, I was keen to check out the original, though it'sHaving loved the proof-of-concept short film that was made for Apocalypse Now Now earlier this year, I was keen to check out the original, though it's not the sort of thing that would usually pique my interest (South African setting aside). It started really well, and I loved Baxter Zevcenko immediately, even if he did feel a lot more like an adult's idea of a teenage boy than an actual 16-year-old. The early chapters about life in Cape Town and high school gang wars were by far the most engaging. After that, it descended into YA fantasy silliness (prophecies and monsters and zombie porn, oh my) and I got a bit bored. I'd still happily watch a full-length film version, though.
It was as a child that I first became infatuated with horror stories, and horror stories for kids are still among my very favourites. Tales like the oIt was as a child that I first became infatuated with horror stories, and horror stories for kids are still among my very favourites. Tales like the ones in The Wrong Train must be so difficult to write: aimed at (I presume) a teenage audience, they have to be incredibly scary without resorting to excessive blood and gore. Jeremy de Quidt pulls this off wonderfully, creating a collection that will please readers of any age as long as they have a healthy taste for the macabre.
Like Chris Priestley's Tales of Terror series, this book has an overarching narrative which links together a series of creepy tales. A boy gets on – you guessed it – the wrong train, panics, and gets off at the first stop, which turns out to be a 'permanent way post', meant for use by railway workers. It's in the middle of nowhere and it's pitch dark, but there's an elderly man and his dog waiting there too. And to pass the time, the old man starts telling the boy stories, each with a horrible twist...
It's hard to pick a favourite, but I think it might have to be 'Picture Me': I read it at night with a candle flickering in the corner and honestly felt I was going to jump out of my skin if I heard so much as a pin drop – the image of the girl with the frightened expression staring into the camera was just so haunting. I also loved 'Dead Molly', which becomes ever more surreal and disorientating, echoing its protagonist's experience. But every single story is great. The sinister red Cadillac, the babysitter's terrifying charges, the greasy, sooty candles: characters, scenes and objects jump vividly out of the book; I could have read several hundred pages more. And the way it's all tied up at the end is so clever!
All in all, Ioved this – it's creepy, atmospheric, suspenseful and a lot of fun. I shall eagerly look forward to more stories from this author.
I love that this is the YA fiction that Generation Z get to grow up with, about fan culture and internet friendships and the enormity of loving somethI love that this is the YA fiction that Generation Z get to grow up with, about fan culture and internet friendships and the enormity of loving something when you're still young and pure enough for that to be something bigger than an individual. Like (it seems) so many stories currently being written by young female authors, it nails the discourse and vernacular of fan communities in a way that may well date very quickly, but here and now it feels exhilaratingly fresh, accurate, affectionate. Snappy and adorable and great fun to read.
This book is intended for readers much younger than me, but ghost story graphic novels are in such short supply, I couldn't resist it regardless.
The sThis book is intended for readers much younger than me, but ghost story graphic novels are in such short supply, I couldn't resist it regardless.
The scene-setting part of the story, set in 1982, is told through the diary entries of a young girl in a care home, Thornhill. Mary is mute, and she prefers to spend most of her time alone in her room, making and playing with her beloved dolls. Her oddness makes her a target for bullies, and one girl in particular contrives to torment her in every possible way. As things get worse and worse, she spends her days dreaming of revenge.
In the present day, Ella moves into the house opposite the now-dilapidated Thornhill. She lives with her father, who's rarely at home (her mother's death prior to the move is implied, but not addressed). Exploring the neighbourhood, she wanders into Thornhill's overgrown gardens and sees another girl. She can't seem to catch up with the figure – but she does find threadbare dolls in the long grass. Ella's story forms the bulk of the book and is told through illustrations, without dialogue.
Thornhill is 550 pages long, but a quick read nonetheless; naturally, the plot is very simple. At first I wasn't that keen on the illustration, but the further I got into the story, the more I appreciated the beauty in it: the way Smy sketches animals on the move, the silhouettes of buildings against the night sky. While ultimately too juvenile to truly engage me – I'd have liked more elucidation of Mary and her enemy's histories prior to Thornhill – this is a pleasantly creepy little tale.
I received an advance review copy of Thornhill from the publisher through Edelweiss.
I'm too old to associate the Harry Potter books with my childhood, and I always find it faintly bemusing when anyone I think of as 'my age' (a bracketI'm too old to associate the Harry Potter books with my childhood, and I always find it faintly bemusing when anyone I think of as 'my age' (a bracket that includes people from their mid-twenties to mid-thirties) does so. I didn't read the first Potter until after I'd seen the first film, when I was at university, but nevertheless I've come to associate both the books and the films with comfort. Along with certain cosy mystery series – Marple, Rosemary & Thyme, Death in Paradise – and kids' TV shows from my student years, I've often watched and/or read them when I was ill or depressed (or both), and they have stronger-than-usual connotations of a particular form of escapism: escape to the enclosed and 'safe' feelings typically associated with childhood, without recourse to things from my actual childhood, which might provoke more specific and complicated memories.
I think all of this helped Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to work better for me than it might for a true Potter devotee. I enjoyed – more than I expected – being back in this world; it's familiar and comfortable, even with the 'nineteen years later' angle, and that's what I wanted from it. The Albus/Scorpius dynamic is perfect (a big thumbs up for Slytherin heroes, too) and it's exciting and fun. And yes, it is a script and not a book, and it suffers for that, but I actually think the dialogue does a pretty good job of replicating Rowling's typical style. It has its much-discussed problems, notably that Harry's other two kids might as well not exist, and more problematically that the time travel stuff throws a lot of things from the previous books into question; these would undoubtedly be less noticeable in a stage or film version, where you'd be caught up in the visual magic of it all. (It's difficult to imagine how some of the effects described in the stage directions would actually be achieved in a theatre, and that can be quite distracting when you're reading it.)
If you ignore the offputting title, this is really interesting on the oddness of the 'it reads like fanfiction' critique so often levelled at the play/script/book....more
As I'm only an occasional, and very picky, reader of YA and children's books, I feel they have to work extra hard to impress me. Unlike so many othersAs I'm only an occasional, and very picky, reader of YA and children's books, I feel they have to work extra hard to impress me. Unlike so many others, The Square Root of Summer not only impressed me, but surpassed any and all expectations I could have had: it's not just a decent YA novel, it's a fantastic concept and a warm, heartfelt story that works well for any audience. I also liked the way it sidestepped so many of the paths I'd expect a book like this to go down: main character Gottie is science-obsessed rather than bookish; she's average in many respects instead of being your typical special-snowflake YA heroine who's amazing in every way; she's a brilliant student but knows nothing about, for example, music, and she's happy in her small and unremarkable home town. She is, happily, a believable teenager, a thing that's much rarer than it should be in novels for both adults and kids.
Gottie is relatable, but her life comes with just enough touches of everyday magic to hit that aspirational sweet spot. The loveably eccentric family, bacchanalian parties, beach hangouts and cosy country bookshop all made me long for the endless summers of adolescence. Her relationship woes are nicely done (when I was the exact same age as her I had a relationship with a boy who wouldn't acknowledge me in public, so the Jason storyline traced over old, old wounds) but it's her grief for beloved grandfather Grey that really hits home, really makes Gottie's characterisation sing. And that's without even mentioning the fantasy bits - they're great, and they make The Square Root of Summer read like a junior version of Scarlett Thomas's The End of Mr. Y.
I felt bereft when I parted from Gottie and co, and the ending made me cry on a train. A lovely, heart-melting book....more
A sugar rush/caffeine hit of a book, read while I was ill in bed. Sometimes the dark humour hit the mark; sometimes the story seemed more unpleasantlyA sugar rush/caffeine hit of a book, read while I was ill in bed. Sometimes the dark humour hit the mark; sometimes the story seemed more unpleasantly judgemental about its own characters than anything else (does Apple's weight really have to be used as a punchline quite so often? Isn't it a bit dubious that the Dominican character 'knows about crime' because of her family?) The fandom stuff was very fun, though the language and cultural references are going to be incredibly dated in a couple of years, if not sooner. (And you'd think an author with her finger so firmly on the pulse of fandom culture would realise British teens would be far more likely to use the same US-centric internet vernacular as the main characters than say stuff like 'love', 'mate' and 'bloody hell' every other sentence.) Despite the flaws, I read it all hungrily, and I desperately wanted the girls to get away with it. Enjoyable fluff and very compelling. ...more
Stories about teenagers are a tricky thing. Should they always - no matter how dark and depraved - be categorised as young adult fiction, merely by diStories about teenagers are a tricky thing. Should they always - no matter how dark and depraved - be categorised as young adult fiction, merely by dint of their protagonists' ages? (The controversy over the 18 certificate given to the film The Diary of a Teenage Girl springs to mind.) Like the occasional misidentification of literary novels as thrillers because of the presence of certain themes, the assumption that all books with teenage characters are YA tends to irritate me. But in the case of Girls on Fire, I think that assumption might be the best way to view the book.
This novel is a typical narrative of teenage rebellion in which a 'bad girl', Lacey, leads a 'good girl', Hannah - later rechristened Dex - astray. Of course there are twists in the tale, but many of them are equally predictable in their own way. I don't know quite how to sum it up, genre-wise - maybe I need a shelf for coming-of-age novels, or poisonous one-sided friendships, or just stories about teenage lives. The plot's starting point, the question of why the local school's beloved 'golden boy' committed suicide, is a mystery that's eventually explained, but it is irrelevant for much of the story. Dex and Lacey's bond is more the point. They take turns narrating, in chapters that cast light on different aspects of their characters. Lacey, a hero in Dex's eyes, appears first as manipulative and bitchy, then resolves into a tragic figure; Dex, the 'nobody', appears honest, a victim, and resolves into an unreliable narrator.
Robin Wasserman has previously penned a swathe of YA novels, but Girls on Fire is described on her website as her 'debut novel for adults'; nevertheless, at the time of writing, it has been shelved predominantly as young adult on Goodreads, and it feels far better suited to a teenage reader. Retrospectively, the author's existing backround in YA fiction makes perfect sense - Girls on Fire is positively gleeful about not needing to be PG-rated, piling on the underage sex and endless swearing, violence and gore, orgies and vicious bullying. It's much like Lacey herself - her nonconformist posturing and, later, her devil-worshipper act, the ways in which she tries so hard to be shocking but never quite manages to convince anyone other than a handful of her peers.
That said: Girls on Fire is compelling, occasionally even incandescent. The setting, the sleepy town of Battle Creek, is the most beautifully realised thing about the book; certain places, such as the woods and the lake, are thick with atmosphere. Indeed, the things and objects in the story - the music, the clothes, Lacey's car - are more tangible than the protagonists. It's set in the early 90s, so Lacey's obsession with Nirvana makes Kurt Cobain practically a supporting character, and the 'Satanic panic' of that era provides a backdrop to the plot, heightening local parents' suspicion of Lacey and Dex, turning their grunge makeovers into something deeper and more sinister.
Although I keep on saying I'm trying harder to stop being such a sucker for hype, I fell for the the spiel about this one. 'A mini Thelma & Louise as directed by David Lynch', one early review had it. As my Goodreads and Twitter feeds fill up with rave reviews, I have to give a resounding shrug. It's absolutely fine, but for me, it lacked the originality or power that would really have made it a memorable story. Two stars, on Goodreads, is supposed to mean 'it was okay', and that's how my rating is intended; this is not at all a bad book, just assuredly not a book for me, and my main complaint is that I feel like the marketing campaign duped me into reading a story that really belongs to a younger audience.
If you liked this, you'll also like / If you didn't like this, you might prefer... - Gillian Flynn's Dark Places (my favourite of Flynn's books) is the very obvious comparison, with many similarities to Girls on Fire, including a truly unflinching portrait of the lives of teens, copious amounts of sex/drugs/violence etc, a small-town setting, and suspected Satanism. - Things We Have in Common by Tasha Kavanagh also focuses on the obsession a 'nobody' has with a much cooler/more popular girl, although the trajectory of the plot is very different. It's a story I found simultaneously more believable, weirder, and more exciting than this one. - The Secret Place by Tana French is a compelling adult mystery which nevertheless keeps a close, emotive focus on the friendships and rivalries within a group of teenage girls. French's attempts to ape 2010s teenagers' patterns of speech are hit and miss, but when she talks about their emotions and what they care about most, the magic and horror of being that age, she's so spot on it can make for painful flashbacks.
I received an advance review copy of Girls on Fire from the publisher through NetGalley....more
I've read Chris Priestley's 'Tales of Terror' series in a strange order which has meant I've come to this, the first one published, last. I also likedI've read Chris Priestley's 'Tales of Terror' series in a strange order which has meant I've come to this, the first one published, last. I also liked it the most. The formula used in the other volumes, with a central narrative tying all the other tales together, is at its best here. Naive young Edgar goes to visit his ancient Uncle Montague to listen to his macabre stories, each of which seems to be linked to an object in the room where they sit. Though he feigns bravado, Edgar grows increasingly frightened by his uncle's apparent conviction that all the tales are true, and then it's time for him to go home - if he can make it past the silent children lurking in the woods...
Priestley's stories are suitable for kids, but wonderfully readable for adults too. He has a real way with atmosphere and is fantastic at creating the kind of creepy, spooky, misty ambience essential for a classic ghost story to work. The stories aren't predictable, either: you never know whether their young heroes and heroines will escape evil or meet a grisly end. This was a great read to usher in autumn....more
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