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Book Review: Ghost Girl by Ally Malineko

cover art for Ghost Girl by Ally Malineko

Ghost Girl  by Ally Malineko

Katherine Tegen Books, 2021

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0063044609

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook ( Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

 

Knobb’s Ferry is a sleepy little town, just south of Sleepy Hollow, home to the tale “Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman”, is the kind of place tourist stop to fill up with a tank of gas or have a slice of pie on the way, and it’s also home to sixth grader Zee Puckett, who has just discovered she is gifted with the ability to see ghosts.

Zee is an outsider with a prickly personality, but she is also a born storyteller, and she especially loves making up and telling ghost stories, much to the delight of her peers. She lives with her older sister, Abby. Their father has been out of town for six months, looking for work, and they haven’t heard from him, so the girls are scraping by. While Abby works, Zee goes to school and hangs out at the cemetery with her friend Elijah. Elijah’s mother is ill, and his father was an athlete and is now a mechanic. Elijah is bright, but uninterested in sports or cars, a disappointment to his dad. During a field trip to the library, Zee sees her first ghost. She’s spotted by her frenemy, popular Nellie Blake, who announces on the bus home that Zee thinks she was talking to a ghost, earning Zee the nickname “Ghost Girl”.

In the meantime, the principal has disappeared, leading to the appointment of a new one, Principal Scratch. Principal Scratch encourages the students to put themselves first, and focus on their own desires, and Zee watches as the people around her start to see their hopes miraculously come true. After a visit from Principal Scratch, the girls’ father starts regularly calling Abby, Eli’s mother is suddenly healthy again, and Nellie finds her missing dog.  Everyone in town loves Principal Scratch, yet the townspeople are drained of energy. Only Zee can see that something is wrong, and she helps Eli and Nellie break Principal Scratch’s hold over them. Can the three of them stop Principal Scratch and break his hold over the town?

Early in the book Principal Scratch muses that sixth grade is a testing time, “a strange, in-between time… when we walk that delicate line between good and bad. Between bully and friend.”  Malineko portrays the growth of Zee and her friends in that liminal time, as they realize people, including each other, have more going on than they show to the world, and that that line is not as solid as it appears.

With vivid descriptions, terrifying hellhounds, gruesome moments, plenty of suspense, and a librarian in their corner, Malineko has created a dark story, told with compassion, about family, friendship, becoming comfortable with yourself, and standing together, that ends with real hope. Kids who enjoyed A Tale Dark and Grimm or the Shadow School books will find a lot to like here, and parts of the book reminded me of Tuck Everlasting. Knobb’s Ferry may not have a headless horseman, but it does have a ghost girl. Recommended for grades 4-7.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on November 15, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: The Fatal Move and Other Stories by Conall Cearnach

cover art for The Fatal Move and Other Stories by Conall Cearnach

The Fatal Move and Other Stories by Conall Cearnach

Swan River Press, 2021 (reprint, originally published in 1924)

ISBN: 978-1-78380-037-7

Available: Hardcover  ( Swan River Press )

 

 

Reprinted for the first time in nearly one hundred years, The Fatal Move is a slim collection of six ghostly tales penned by Conall Cearnach (the pseudonym of F.W. O’Connell, a peculiar and versatile Irish clergyman and scholar).

 

Thus, lovers of ghost and supernatural stories have the opportunity to get a taste of a different author rather than keep reading the classic works of the usual suspects.

 

The title story, “The Fatal Move” effectively portrays two bachelor friends, both passionate chess players, in love with the same woman. In a final chess game, an ingenious trick bound to bring death to one of the players will select the survivor(and winner of the woman’s heart).

 

The excellent “The  Fiend That Walks Behind” describes the obsession of a psychiatrist whose fame has usurped that of the real author of a scientific discovery, and becomes the object of a paranormal haunting and vengeance.

 

“The Homing Bone”,  a traditional type of ghost story– featuring an anatomist stealing a femur from a grave site– is  so well-told it entices the reader despite its predictable outcome, while “Professor Danvers’ Disappearance” is an intriguing, clever mystery, with a supernatural veneer.

 

The volume is enhanced by a number of quite enjoyable short essays by the author, addressing topics such as dreams, sleeplessness, nervous children, and the power of languages, plus an Irish alternative view of Dante’s Divina Commedia, “ The Vision of Merlino”.  The book is prefaced by an exhaustive, learned introduction by Reggie Chamberlain-King. “F.W. O’Connell: Master of Strange Tongues”.

 

A delightful change from the usual stuff published nowadays.

 

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

Posted on June 25, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Echoes of Home: A Ghost Story by M.L. Rayner

Echoes of Home: A Ghost Story by M.L. Rayner

Question Mark Press, 2020

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8553179045

Available:  Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition ( Amazon.com )

 

Les Wills is alone in the world. His brothers aren’t keeping in touch, he’s just buried his mother, and he’s depressed by it all. One night his brother Jonathan unexpectedly turns up, gifts him the deed to a remote cottage in the Scottish Highlands, and tells him that if he wants it he’ll need to be there by the next evening. With nothing keeping him, Les optimistically takes off to his new property. Jonathan’s description of the cottage wasn’t exactly accurate, though, and instead of a sales agent meeting him with the keys to a cozy cottage, he discovers a dark, chilly, isolated residence, luckily with the keys in the door.

 

After an uneasy night in his new home, Elphin Cottage, Les drives into town for supplies and breakfast, where he meets Michael Coull, an elderly resident who warns him that the cottage has a “dark past” and that many locals have seen things on the property “they dare not speak of.” Although he is entranced by the beauty of the area, Les starts to wonder if he is seeing and hearing things: a mysterious figure at the edge of a brook, tapping on the window that has no apparent cause, flickering lights in an abandoned cottage, and voices; he has vivid, unsettling dreams.

 

Proving to have the worst survival skills ever, Les wanders the area on his own despite poor weather, an unfamiliar environment, a house clearly unprepared for winter, and the feeling that he is being watched and his home invaded in his absence by… something. His terror is enough for him to flee Elgin Cottage on foot in a blizzard through several feet of snow and through a wooded area in hopes of reaching the closest inn. While there, he once again encounters Coull, who finally gives him the details of Elphin Cottage’s dark past and how to free it of its hauntings. M.L Rayner took inspiration for the story and names for the characters behind the haunting of Elphin Cottage and the surrounding area from his own family genealogy. Although it takes place at the time of the Irish Potato Blight, the story is set in the Scottish Highlands, which I did not know was also affected.

 

Rayner’s lyrical prose brings the remote environment to life, and draws vivid pictures of the starving families and blighted crops during the crop failures that led to the deaths of the ghosts haunting Elphin Cottage. The cruelty of the landowner towards his tenants and the complicity of his guests is heartwrenching.  Rayner also does a great job of creating creepy and suspenseful situations and making the reader question the mundane: did the door blow open on its own, or was it something supernatural? Les, the narrator, is less compelling, and it’s only through the relationship he builds with Michael Coull that we get any sense of him.

 

The unique backstory and creepy, suspenseful atmosphere make Echoes of Home worth checking out.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on June 11, 2021 by , Reply
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