This Is Not a Ghost Story by Andrea Portes (review)

If she’s going to have any funds for her time at Bryn Mawr, seventeen-year-old Daffodil needs to make some serious cash, and it just so happens an eccentric professor is willing to pay her big bucks if she house-sits for the summer. Sure, the place is mostly isolated and generally creepy, what with the nightly noises of scratching and thumping, but money is money, and really, what could go wrong? Readers will likely suspect plenty, and things go from unsettling, as objects disappear only to reappear elsewhere later, to downright menacing, as an increasingly unstable neighbor visits and Daffodil has visions of death and gore. The chills here are on par with The Shining, with bloody images of violent murders matched with a rising tension that indicates that something Bad with a capital B is about to make an appearance. Daffodil initially approaches the eerie happenings with determined bravado and wit, so that when her humor begins to fall away, readers know to be very, very afraid. Unfortunately, a far too tidy ending nullifies much of the terror, and the frightening chaos of the house is wrapped up with rosy, saccharine purpose. Leno’s Horrid (BCCB 9/20) more effectively sticks the landing, but fans who can’t get their fill of haunted houses and gothic horror may find some thrills here.