When Tessa has to reluctantly move from her home in Florida to the windy city of Chicago, she is annoyed and her world feels shattered. And to make matters worse, she soon discovers that the house her parents have bought for her and her brother, Jonah, to live in is haunted…!

The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street. by Lindsay Currie, is a great, spooky little story about the ghost of a little girl called Inez who lived long ago in Chicago… and who seems to be bothering Tessa quite a bit because Inez is still upset about something, even though she died over a hundred years ago. Tessa’s little brother’s freaky doll, Reno, keeps moving around on his own, staring at Tessa and generally creeping her out; things go wrong in the house…and when Tessa finds out about Inez’s “disappearing” statue at the cemetery, she knows something major is wrong.

The lovely thing about this fast-paced, insightful and funny book is that the ghost story is almost a side plot for another one: how Tessa adjusts to living in a new city, and how she goes about making new friends. It’s a poignant experience that many children go through when their parents move house or change jobs, and it’s handled with delicacy, fraught and realistic emotions and playfulness in the story.

So the book works on several levels, and Tessa is a very realistic, anxious young girl who – once she’s solved the mystery of what Inez wants – manages to navigate herself through a new, happier and less anxiety-ridden life. A lovely read…!

[Reviewer’s own copy – we love it that much!]

 

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