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Reviewed by:
  • The Secret Grave by Lois Ruby
  • Kate Quealy-Gainer
Ruby, Lois The Secret Grave. Scholastic, 2017 [256p] (Hauntings)
Paper ed. ISBN 978-0-545-93250-9 $6.99
Reviewed from galleys         M Gr. 4-6

With her friends away, twelve-year-old Hannah decides it's time to explore the forest behind her family's newly purchased but decidedly old, rickety, and sprawling estate, Nightshade. There she meets Cady, a girl close to her own age, who is happy to befriend a lonely Hannah. Soon, though, Hannah is a little creeped out: Cady is starting to wear clothes just like Hannah's and acting weirdly possessive; Scooter, Hannah's little brother, whom Cady finds annoying, is having serious asthma attacks; Cady keeps cryptically mentioning friends she'd like Hannah to meet; and there's some weird stuff—fluttering shadows, mysterious voices—happening at Nightshade. All the ingredients of a great middle-school gothic read are here but they come together haphazardly, resulting in a mishmash of scary story tropes rather than an actual scary story. Hannah's character frustratingly shifts according to whatever the plot requires; her only consistent element is her mistaken belief that Cady just needs a good friend, even when the evidence clearly points to the fact that Cady is a malevolent spirit with very unfriendly intentions. Direct readers instead toward Hahn's classic Wait Till Helen Comes (BCCB 10/86) for a truly haunting story of a ghostly girl's attempt to claim an eternal companion from the living.

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