Recipe for a Young Adult horror novel: Abandoned mental
hospital for troubled girls: check. Dark power that has issues with being left
behind: check. Teenaged narrator who is a troubled girl, with her parents not
trusting her: check. Ghosts: check. Narrator who is killed in the first 100
pages but still has no problem narrating: wait, what?
Our narrator is Delia Piven, who has just inherited said
abandoned mental hospital from an aunt she never met, but did correspond with
for a short time. Aunt Cordelia lived in the asylum, but died outside the
property, walking on the side of the road. Delia and her family here there for
the week, to clean up the place and make it ready for sale. They will be “camping
out” in the asylum during this time; that first night, all hell breaks loose. And
that is pretty close to a literal statement; Delia is killed that first night.
Delia then spends time getting used to being a ghost- how to
walk through walls, how to manipulate solids, mourning the loss of her family,
friends, and dreams of her life ahead, and getting to know the other ghosts (there’s a lot
of them on the property). Some ghosts seem friendly; some are malevolent. And
there is some evil power there that won’t let any of them go… not off the
property or to where ever people go after they die. When Delia’s family
returns, the evil comes to life, and Delia has to figure out how to defeat it
to save her family.
There are some things that made me wonder, like why Delia
could manipulate salt, even with cardboard, when no one else could get close to
it, but I liked the book over all. Delia’s younger sister, an annoying tween in
the first part, matures into kickass young woman. There is one young male
ghost, but he’s just incidental, not a love interest and certainly not a hero
who saves the day. It’s all about girl power! I’d call it thriller rather than
horror, although there are certainly creepy moments, and it’s a quick, stay up
all night, read.
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This in no way influenced my review.
I'll suggest it to a YA that I know
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