The Intruders (review)

Moving into a creepy house and adjusting to a new stepfamily at the same time is a lot for Joel to handle. Good-natured and eager to please, Joel tries to mediate between his hostile sister and two stepbrothers but makes little progress until harrowing evidence that the house is haunted forces the four teens to work together. Soon the kids are tracing the origins of their ghosts through old photographs and articles, trying to make communication with the dead through spontaneous séances, and discovering the strengths each of them will bring to the new family—if they all manage to stay alive. Terse dialogue and brief but creepy descriptions of the hallucinations and dreams of the protagonists establish an urgent pace that is perfect for a ghost story; the unsettling atmosphere of the house is developed within the first few pages, and the tension doesn't let up until the ghosts are released in the final chapter. Richardson relies on foreshadowing and cliffhangers to create most of the fear factor, and this subtlety will satisfy readers searching for a genuinely scary (but not overly gory) novel where the protagonists all survive but still face gratifyingly daunting obstacles along the way.