A captivating historical ghost story.
Beatrice “Beet” MacNeill can see ghosts—but it’s more than just spirits that have been haunting the small coastal town of Skinner Harbour.
When Beet’s cousin Gerry comes to her soaking wet on the night in 1949 when his son, Joseph, is being born, he’s surrounded by the smell of roses and playing a ghostly melody on his fiddle. Beet realizes he’s dead. She has heard many stories about the supernatural—her friend Jeannine is obsessed with them—but it wasn’t until that night that Beet started believing them herself. Something strange is happening on Prince Edward Island. Old Sarah Campbell, Gerry’s estranged mother, dies about a year later, and her beautiful and eerie niece, Marina Shaw, comes to town, putting baby Joseph and his mother in grave danger. When Marina tries to take Joseph away to live with her in Massachusetts, Beet and Jeannine work together with their friends and the local librarian to try to save both him and the island from Marina’s sinister powers, the deadly pull of the water, and a legendary creature of the sea. This is a thoroughly enjoyable and suspenseful tale infused with Scottish immigrants’ folklore. With storylines taking place in multiple decades spanning the 19th and 20th centuries and narration from various characters’ points of view, the plot can occasionally be confusing to follow, but readers will be drawn in by the haunting atmosphere. Characters are cued as White.
A captivating historical ghost story. (author's note) (Paranormal. 12-16)Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-8244-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
Heartbreaking, historical, and a little bit hopeful.
January 1945: as Russians advance through East Prussia, four teens’ lives converge in hopes of escape.
Returning to the successful formula of her highly lauded debut, Between Shades of Gray (2011), Sepetys combines research (described in extensive backmatter) with well-crafted fiction to bring to life another little-known story: the sinking (from Soviet torpedoes) of the German ship Wilhelm Gustloff. Told in four alternating voices—Lithuanian nurse Joana, Polish Emilia, Prussian forger Florian, and German soldier Alfred—with often contemporary cadences, this stints on neither history nor fiction. The three sympathetic refugees and their motley companions (especially an orphaned boy and an elderly shoemaker) make it clear that while the Gustloff was a German ship full of German civilians and soldiers during World War II, its sinking was still a tragedy. Only Alfred, stationed on the Gustloff, lacks sympathy; almost a caricature, he is self-delusional, unlikable, a Hitler worshiper. As a vehicle for exposition, however, and a reminder of Germany’s role in the war, he serves an invaluable purpose that almost makes up for the mustache-twirling quality of his petty villainy. The inevitability of the ending (including the loss of several characters) doesn’t change its poignancy, and the short chapters and slowly revealed back stories for each character guarantee the pages keep turning.
Heartbreaking, historical, and a little bit hopeful. (author’s note, research and sources, maps) (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-16030-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
PROFILES
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.
For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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