The Dollhouse: A Ghost Story by Charis CotterMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
2.5 stars
I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
But I had a bad habit of getting lost in my imagination. Sometimes it got me into trouble.
Alice is twelve years old when her parents have drifted so far apart that her mother decides that her father will never put his family ahead of his work. As a nurse that works on contract, Alice's mother decides to take a job that will have her and Alice staying with an elder lady who has just broken her leg and will take care of her until it heals. Alice already has an overactive imagination, so when the residence they are staying at turns to be a turn of the century Victorian house that comes equipped with secret passages and, possibly, ghosts, she starts to question her reality.
The ghost bed. The ghost girl. Now I was sure. It wasn't a nightmare.
The Dollhouse was a young adult story that started off acknowledging the story's point-of-view was from an unreliable narrator, Alice. Readers are given multiple examples of how Alice spun instances out of control, her mother being late home one night has Alice thinking she died in a car cash and imagining her father dating and marrying a woman who hates Alice. So, when Alice arrives at the Victorian house, readers aren't sure if they should trust how Alice is “seeing” circumstances and events, thus, giving the story a mystery, thriller, and spooky feel without having to give truly scary moments for younger readers.
There was nothing else there except---a dollhouse.
On the way to the house, Alice and her mother take a train and when the train makes an abrupt stop, Alice hits her head hard. She starts to think there was a big train accident and even though her mother tells her she just bumped her head, the question of was there a dangerous accident, floats through the story. Is Alice trying to be a unreliable narrator, is her concussion playing a part in her foggy mind, or is there something supernatural going on that ties into the house they're staying at? Things pick up pretty quick as on the first night Alice stays at the house, she wakes up to a girl in her bed, thinking she is a ghost, she of course freaks out but her mother and the older woman, work to convince her it was a just a dream. A secondary character that plays a big part is the housekeeper's daughter, an intellectual disabled girl named Lily. Lily claims to see the ghost girl too and the two end up playing off each other.
When they discover an exact replica dollhouse of the Victorian home in the attic, things start to feel like they are spinning out of control when they notice that wherever and however they dress the dolls, affects how Alice sees the ghost girl and her sister when she visits them when she falls asleep. The story had a little bit of The Others and Last Night in Soho movies. I thought the addition of Alice's parents divorce felt shoehorned in at times but it had it's moments of playing into the theme of don't keep your emotions locked away; a theme I'm not sure middle-schoolers would completely get. This would be a fun book for a parent to share with their child for the Halloween season and discuss the issues and keep each other guessing if Alice is getting lost to her imagination or if something supernatural is going on.
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