Dear readers, I am so excited to once again be part of the blog tour for Anne Ursu’s latest book! This is one braids together a realistic middle school story with one of unease and slowly developing horror. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

The house seemed to sit apart from the others on Katydid Street, silent and alone, like it didn’t fit among them. For Violet Hart — whose family is about to move into the house on Katydid Street — very little felt like it fit anymore. Like their old home, suddenly too small since her mother remarried and the new baby arrived. Or Violet’s group of friends, which, since they started middle school, isn’t enough for Violet’s best friend, Paige. Everything seemed to be changing at once. But sometimes, Violet tells herself, change is okay. 

That is, until Violet sees her new room. The attic bedroom in their new house is shadowy, creaky, and wrapped in old yellow wallpaper covered with a faded tangle of twisting vines and sickly flowers. And then, after moving in, Violet falls ill — and does not get better. As days turn into weeks without any improvement, her family growing more confused and her friends wondering if she’s really sick at all, she finds herself spending more time alone in the room with the yellow wallpaper, the shadows moving in the corners, wrapping themselves around her at night.

And soon, Violet starts to suspect that she might not be alone in the room at all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anne Ursu is the author of acclaimed novels The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, The Lost Girl, Breadcrumbs, and The Real Boy, among others. Her work has been selected as a National Book Award nominee, a Kirkus Prize finalist, and as a best book of the year by Parents Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com, and School Library Journal. She lives in Minneapolis with her family and an unruly herd of cats. Find Anne online at anneursu.com.

MY TAKE

Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu. Walden Pond Press, 2024. ISBN 978-0062275158. Read from an e-ARC.

“Perhaps [the house] was wary of the other houses, or perhaps it was the other houses that wished to keep their distance from it. If only houses could talk, then one of them could tell us which it was. Of course, if houses could talk, they could also lie.”

From Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu

It’s clear here that the house is hiding a secret… most especially in the attic room that Violet’s older teen sister, Mia, deemed too creepy and therefore leaves for Violet to sleep in. Yet any supernatural elements here are suspicions, and mostly improbably suspicions at that, so that after this introduction, the story carries on with mostly realistic elements until it’s suddenly very much no longer realistic.  Still, the delicious language keeps that element constantly in mind, as in this phrase describing Mia’s newly pale skin: “…maybe she had absorbed so much light from her computer monitor that her skin itself now gave off an uncanny glow.”

Violet’s bumpy transition to middle school coincides with an illness that mysteriously refuses to go away, aligning her unseen malady with the barely-seen shadow in her new bedroom, both becoming more and more frightening as the story continues. This forces Violet to reach far out of her comfort zone on multiple levels and leads to a gripping final action scene. Though the title and the cover focus on the shadow in the room, Violet’s friend and family relationships are also shifting and very important, with plenty to appeal to readers of realistic fiction, and very satisfying conclusions to the multiple plotlines.  It shines a light on the insidiousness of invisible illnesses – as well as making it seem like there might be something lurking in the older house around the corner from you. 

BLOG TOUR STOPS

January 16 Nerdy Book Club @nerdybookclub

January 17 A Library Mama (@librarymama)

January 18 Charlotte’s Library (@charlotteslibrary)

January 21 Teachers Who Read (@teachers_read)

January 22 Bluestocking Thinking (@bluesockgirl)

        ReadWonder (@patrickontwit)

January 23 A Foodie Bibliophile In Wanderlust (@bethshaum)

January 25 Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers (@grgenius)