As I believe The Dollhouse could have the power to strengthen a relationship between young and old, I highly recommend that children share this book with their grandparents.
Tundra Books
time-traveling mystery
2022
346 pages
Winner of the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards
It's June 1997 and Alice Felicity Greene's parents are newly separated. Alice's mother Ellie is a nurse and gets a job at Blackwood House in the town of Lockport caring for seventy-eight-year-old Mrs. Fiona Bishop who has broken her leg. Ellie and Alice begin their journey to Lockport by train but when there's an accident they must continue by taxi.
The taxi driver tells them: Blackwood House "'stood empty for nearly seventy years. Something happened to the family and the house was locked up. By all accounts that house has seen more sorrow than most, ever since it was built way back in the 1830s... No good ever comes to people who live in that house.'" (p. 18)
But Ellie tells Alice: Blackwood House "'is not haunted. It's just old. There is no such thing as ghosts and I don't want you starting off your summer letting your imagination get the best of you!'" (p. 21)
At Blackwood House, Alice befriends Lily Barnett.
Lily 'was so pretty, with her dark hair and eyes, and she had the body of a teenager, but she acted and moved more like a six-year-old.' (p. 26)
Together Alice and Lily explore the grand old house. They discover a locked room. In the locked room they discover a...dollhouse.
Author Charis Cotter is a wordsmith who paints vivid pictures, such as...
'I felt like she and I were marooned in a small island of candlelight while the darkness lapped around us like waves against the shore.' (p. 282)
The Dollhouse: a ghost story is a carefully crafted, suspense-filled book that kept me entertained from the first page to the last.
