Synopsis: We’re waiting for you to come and play. Dunvegan School for Girls has been closed for many years. Converted into a family home, the teachers and students are long gone. But they left something behind…Sophie arrives at the old schoolhouse to spend the summer with her cousins. Brooding Cameron with his scarred hand, strange Lilias with a fear of bones and Piper, who seems just a bit too good to be true. And then there’s her other cousin. The girl with a room full of antique dolls. The girl that shouldn’t be there. The girl that died.
Format Read: Paperback
Release Date: 5th January 2015
Pages: 342
Genres: Paranormal, Horror, Young Adult, Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Fantasy
Review: This was not what I expected at all. I thought it was going to be a terrifying horror book about creepy dolls. It wasn’t that at all but it it was an incredible read that had me engaged in the story from the first line of the book.
The story follows Sophie a teen who had just lost her best friend and was sent to Skye to stay with her uncle and his children for a few weeks. While there she’s haunted by voices, sounds. The people who live there all also struggle with that and each have mental health issues. She’s there investigating in her own way what happened to her cousin Rebecca but she finds the Frozen Charlotte dolls and all that has happened in that house for years gone by.
It was really fun reading this and being with Sophie as she figured out everything that happened in that house and with the Charlotte dolls, and with her family. It was pretty tense and in some parts creepy. For me it wasn’t scary or filled with horror as I thought it would have been, but to someone else that may not have read much of this genre might be more scared by it.
Where to buy: Amazon, Wordery, Book Depository, Waterstones
About Author: Alex Bell was born in 1986. She always wanted to be a writer but had several different back-up plans to ensure she didn’t end up in the poor house first. For some years these ranged from dolphin trainer to animal shelter vet but then, at fifteen, she had an epiphany involving John and Robert Kennedy and decided to become a lawyer instead.
To that end she eagerly started a Law Degree only to find it so boring that she was at a very real risk of going completely insane. To mitigate this she started writing again. The second book got her an agent with Carolyn Whitaker of London Independent Books but, unfortunately, not a publisher. The third book, written during her first summer holidays off from university, found a home with Gollancz. The Ninth Circle came out in April 2008 with possibly the most beautiful cover ever created (matched only by her second book, Jasmyn).
Not one to learn from past experience, Alex started the Legal Practice Course in London. There she met some great people and had a lot of fun messing about during lessons that were clearly meant to be extremely solemn affairs. Thankfully, she dropped out just before the point where all students must submit to the personality-removing process that is a compulsory part of being an esteemed member of the legal profession.
Now she happily dwells in an entirely make-believe world of blood, death, madness, murder and mayhem. The doctors have advised that it is best not to disturb her, for she appears to be happy there.
apapergirlapapertown 