What high-school kid wants to be a freak, especially the kind who talks to dead people? Not Sparrow Delaney, which is why she’s keeping the secret from her family of seven women, all skilled mediums, that she can see and talk to ghosts. Evidently, as the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, she has a special psychic gift, but when the ghost of a teenage boy appears to her in her classroom and pleads for her help, she can’t ignore him. The current abundance of supernatural and occult books usually have historical settings, but the clever twist in this offering casts Sparrow’s family in contemporary time in Lily Dale, N.Y., a Spiritualist community. Early references to thrift stores and computers clue the reader as modern trappings enhance the confrontations and dilemmas between the dearly departed and the visionary living. Idiosyncratic sisters (all named for birds by their ornithologist father who’s now missing), budding romance, a mysterious fatal accident and a live-wire grandmother all test Sparrow’s own spirit as she faces her destiny. Sparrow’s plight gives new meaning to “not a ghost of a chance”—an entertaining one. (Fiction. 12-16)
Pub Date: July 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-113158-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2007
The Sixth Sense meets The Da Vinci Code for teen readers
Sixteen-year-old Riley Strout and her three best friends are bound together by loss.
Riley’s mother died two years ago. Jay lost his father. Kate lost the aunt who was more like a mother. And Noah’s twin brother hanged himself in the basement. Thrown together in an after-school grief-counseling program in their mostly white Ohio suburb, the foursome shares a bond so deep they are more family than friends. Yet none of them could have possibly imagined the strange happenings that would force them to come face to face with their grief. Twenty-four hours after trying on an ancient cross discovered by Jay’s father before his death, Riley sees her mother in the grocery store. It’s not long before both Jay and Kate confess to seeing their deceased loved ones, too. And then, in an attempt to explain the phenomenon tormenting his friends, Noah suddenly disappears. What follows is Riley’s firsthand account of the friends’ desperate attempt to find Noah and to uncover the truth behind their visions. Kudos to France for creating distinct and compelling characters that will keep readers invested in her debut. Though the plot could have withstood a little tightening to heighten suspense and intensify the experience for readers, this is an entertaining mystery cleverly rooted in religious lore.
The Sixth Sense meets The Da Vinci Code for teen readers . (Paranormal suspense. 12-16)Pub Date: July 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61695-657-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Soho Teen
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This thrilling historical mystery will have readers anxiously turning pages and checking under their beds
A young Victorian is haunted and hunted by monsters from the era’s darkest literature in Peacock’s spine-tingling mystery.
Edgar Brim has lived every story he has ever read. Sent to the College on the Moors (for Boys) after the mysterious death of his father, the white English lad spends his days dodging bullies and the rugby ball, while his nights are spent amid the mesmerizing and terrifying creations of such authors as Le Fanu, Stevenson, and Shelley, whose mad villains and vicious monsters invade Edgar’s nightmares. In his last year of school, when a young boy he has befriended suddenly dies, teenage Edgar is approached by Professor Lear, who claims that the student and Edgar’s father were both murdered for the same reason that Edgar’s own life is in danger—they suspected the monsters from dark stories are real. Joined by the professor’s attractive grandson and fearless granddaughter, as well as a talented and deceptive friend from school, Edgar and Lear set out to hunt down the bloodthirsty creature from the pages of the newest sensation novel before it kills them to protect its secret. With cameos from such artistic giants as Bram Stoker and the actor Henry Irving, Peacock weaves the frissons of classic Gothic horror into the reality of a culture entranced by its own dark creations.
This thrilling historical mystery will have readers anxiously turning pages and checking under their beds . (Historical thriller. 12-16)Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-698-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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