All About Middle Grade Review: Ghostlight [blog tour]

Ghostlight by Sonia Gensler, August 4, 2015. 256 pages. Published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. Source: Blue Slip Media.

Things that go bump in the night are just the beginning when a summer film project becomes a real-life ghost story!
Avery is looking forward to another summer at Grandma’s farm, at least until her brother says he’s too old for “Kingdom,” the imaginary world they’d spent years creating. Lucky for her, there’s a new kid staying in the cottage down the road: a city boy with a famous dad, Julian’s more than a little full of himself, but he’s also a storyteller like Avery. So when he announces his plan to film a ghost story, Avery is eager to join in.

Unfortunately, Julian wants to film at Hilliard House, a looming, empty mansion that Grandma has absolutely forbidden her to enter. As terrified as Avery is of Grandma’s wrath, the allure of filmmaking is impossible to resist.

As the kids explore the secrets of Hilliard house, eerie things begin to happen, and the “imaginary” dangers in their movie threaten to become very real. Have Avery and Julian awakened a menacing presence? Can they turn back before they go too far?

First Sentence:

We'd only been at Grandma's for five minutes before Blake ruined everything.

Here's a little truth, I really enjoy scary books and movies. While I likes scary books and movies, I don't like dumb/stupid "scary" things. So, while I tend to say yes to horror books, I can be, well, quite hard to please when I read them since I don't scare easily/at all.

Even though I found myself not the least bit scared by Ghostlight, I still thought it was an incredibly good read. I loved the foreshadowing that took place throughout the entire book as things were slowly brought to light in regards to the Hilliard House and the mystery that surrounded its past. There were just so many pieces to the mystery that needed telling for everything to come together, and you know what, the author did a really great job of bringing the story to life especially with how Avery and Julian's stories played into the overall story (some things you probably will not see coming).

Okay, so I babbled on on how I enjoyed the complex story of the haunting of Hilliard House...so, I'll try to move onto the rest of the book...try.

In all seriousness, while I was more than annoyed with Julian and the games he played, I found his overall story-line to be interesting. It took learning more of his backstory, even though I figured it out based on the clues, to understand why he acted the way he did. That being said, I still found it really hard to even remotely like him. While Avery was also hard to like at times I really did enjoy her story because so much of her past, and that of her family, was important for the overall plot-line. As Avery's story unfolded with her previous experience at the old Hilliard House, I couldn't help but find myself running through possibilities on what happened both in the past and then when she was younger. It piqued my interest!!

Between foreshadowing and overall character plot points, I really thought Sonia Gensler did one incredible job with Ghostlight. The atmosphere of the book just pulled me in from the very beginning and left me needing all the answers. The short of it is, I had a lot of fun reading this one. Pretty much every thing about Ghostlight had me wanting to read more of it. While not scary to me, I loved how the book had both light and darkness wrapped into it. It balanced out really well as the characters had so much to work through.

Final Verdict: Ghostlight- Creepy and thoroughly enjoyable, this book will pull you into a dark history surrounding an old house and two families.

Ghostlight earns

this book was received for review consideration. All thoughts are my own.