The Dollhouse: A Ghost Story

I really loved this book. Especially the part that the dollhouse plays in it. I can't say alot without giving away the plot, but I absolutely loved the characters. I think I loved Lilly the most, but adored Alice as well. Kept me guessing till the end. A perfect scary read for middle graders and adults alike.

Charis Cotter's books remind me very much of Mary Downing Hahn's work. This one is no different. We have a child in a new place, a mystery, and a bit of the supernatural at work. At no point did this book come across as scary, but not all ghost stories have to be frightening, so I was OK with that. This book is definitely more mystery than horror.Alice and her mother are spending the summer in Mrs. Bishop's enormous house full of antiques. Mrs. Bishop has had a nasty fall and Alice's mother is to be her live-in nurse. While exploring (and the house is full of secret passages and locked doors), Alice discovers a dollhouse - an exact replica in miniature of the house they're staying in. Alice discovers something else, too - a ghost in her bed. But is it a ghost, or something else? Why do the changes to the dollhouse affect the ghostly experiences/dreams that Alice has - and vice versa? Who is Mrs. Bishop, and what secrets does she keep hidden?Mixed in with the mystery are some modern real-life issues. The main character's parents separate (rather abruptly) at the beginning of the book and thus she is dealing with this throughout the story. We have a couple of characters with developmental disabilities which are explained only in the vaguest of terms. I think this was an attempt at inclusion but I'm not sure how well it worked. The main character herself seems to suffer from sometimes-crippling anxiety and has a tendency toward catastrophizing.While not my favorite of Cotter's stories, I did enjoy the mystery and the hazy-childhood-summertime feel of the book.

This book definitely has the creepy element that middle school readers enjoy. I enjoyed it and felt spooked at times. For example, how terrifying would it be to wake up in the dark of the night to breathing in the bed next to you.At times I felt confused as Alice moved between reality and dream world or whatever it was. Even after reading, I’m not exactly sure of the explanation, but the writing was so good it kept me turning pages into the night.The story may be a little long for some readers to stick it out.So what’s going on?Life is being upended for Alice and not in a good way. Her parents aren’t getting along and the divorce word has been mentioned. This fact causes them to cancel their yearly cottage trip. This is the event that Alice waits for the whole the school year. Instead, Alice and her mom are heading to some small, back woods town where Alice's mom will be a live-in nurse to a rich and grouchy elderly lady who very much dislikes children. I’m still a bit fuzzy as to why her mother chose this route.Anyway, the house is huge, imposing and spooky, and everything inside, although ancient, has been kept in pristine condition. In other words it is not a fun place to spend the summer. Things start to get weird when Alice finds an intricately designed dollhouse in the forbidden attic that's an exact replica of the house she's living in. Then she wakes up to find a girl asleep next to her in her bed—a girl who looks a lot like one of the dolls from the dollhouse.As the dollhouse evolves and becomes a disturbing part of Alice’s waking and sleeping world, she becomes determined to solve the mystery. Alice is a whole lot braver than I would have ever been. Who are the girls in the dollhouse? What happened to them? And what is their connection to the unkind and mysterious woman who owns the house?

This is a super cute ghosty mystery..There are definitely some really good spooky parts, and the house definitely lends to that spooky feel too. I love Alice and her overactive imagination.. Sometimes it runs away from her and she becomes so involved in her daydreams that when she comes out of it she can't always tell whats real and what was in her head. Her parents seem to be on the verge of divorce, she is going to be spending the summer in a house alone instead of hanging with all her friends, and to top it off she gets hurt when the train she is riding has an accident..So when arriving at her moms new temproary job, and the house definitely looks haunted.. well its the perfect environment for an active imagination. And when her new friend Lily tells her that her bedroom has a ghost that sleeps in her bed.. well.. who wouldn't be a little freaked out.Then Alice and Lily find a dollhouse, one that looks exactly like the house she lives in, with dolls of the people shes already met... and when happens in the doll house seems to change the real house and vice versa.. Alice can't tell if what shes seeing is real.. Is Fizz a ghost? is she somehow traveling into the past? Is she traveling into the dollhouse? How is she going to figure out what is really going on? Could all this just really be in her head from the accident? and if it is all real what does all this have to do with Mrs. Bishop, the woman Alices mom is taking care of?The house is full of secrets, and Alice and Lily are up to the task of uncovering them all..I really enjoyed this story and would definitely read more by this author.

I've started a half dozen books over the last few weeks, and been unable to get into anything. Pandemic, whatever. This was the first book that pulled me back in. I'm always a fan of books set in historic houses, with elements of the Gothic, and this meets those criteria. The protagonist's sense of discombobulation in the face of events was amplified by her concussion, which advanced the dramatic tension. The descriptive language was tactile and memorable