4.25 Stars
In this horror novel for young readers, Alex and his friend Liz try to prove the existence of ghosts to help his mother’s ghost tour business, so that they don’t have to move. However, not all the ghosts in their haunted house are friendly.
As a kid, I too would have loved to live in a real haunted house… until the first scary encounter, of course. So I think I would have really loved this book when I was young and starting to get tired of the same old story pattern from the Goosebumps books I kept borrowing at the library.
The Thorn House Haunting has all the usual aspects of a children’s book: The adults that just won’t listen or believe, the best friend sidekick who is actually much cooler and more capable than the lead, the need to sneak about lest the grown-ups put a stop to your plans, etc. But even reading this as a grown-up with a lot of horror stories under my belt, the plot is intruiging and not all that predictable. I was expecting a fairly straight forward ghost story, but what was going on with the portrait took me by surprise and kept me interested.
Bearce manages to create an athmospheric novel full of spooks and adventure, and sneaks in just a bit of love for science (physics in particular). I’m sure many a young fan of ghosts would love this book.
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