• City of Ghosts
• written by V.E. Schwab
• published by Scholastic (August 2018)

As my kids have gotten a little older and we’ve delved more into middle grade fiction as a family, I’ve noticed a trend: hints of horror popping up in places both expected and unexpected. As the mother of one kid who uses “I’m scared of…” as a bedtime stall and another who does genuinely get creeped out, I’ve been a bit hesitant to include these books in our evening out-louds. I mean, bedtime takes long enough as is.

Having spoken to a couple of authors about horror for kids recently, however, I reconsidered. Some of the writers were of the mind that children, like almost everyone else, enjoy being a bit frightened. Others felt that young characters in novels with an element of horror were good examples of how to handle and resolve the inevitable unexpected that arises, not only in fiction but in real life.

I still read City of Ghosts first before taking it to the kids.

I really enjoyed it, as did they when I brought it to them a few days later.

Cassidy is different from other girls her age. After nearly dying in an accident and being saved by her best friend, Jacob, who just happens to be a ghost, she developed the ability to cross into what she calls “The Veil” – the liminal space where most ghosts exist. When her parents, a historian and an expert in the supernatural, are offered the opportunity to record a TV show about the world’s most haunted places, Cassidy finds herself on an adventure in Edinburgh. There, she meets both Lara, a girl like Cassidy, but one who has a more definite purpose in her trips to the in-between, and the Raven in Red, a ghost who steals children. And their lives.

City of Ghosts is really well paced and exciting in all the right places. The climax felt a tiny bit compressed to me when compared with the rest of the story, though the kids (6 & 8) sat completely silently through the last 40 or so pages in one go. Which suggests to me that the grand finale was just about perfect for the target age group . The horror elements are well placed and essential to the narrative and themes, never gratuitous or simply for scare value or to glom on to genre conventions. It’s deliciously creepy without being terrifying.

Schwab makes a point of diffusing some of the angst by sending the kids on scouting and data gathering missions. She uses information to transform the seemingly insurmountable and terrifying into a puzzle – an exciting, if still dramatically precarious, challenge.

The kids in City of Ghosts get in to trouble as kids will and probably should. They make decisions that aren’t ideal. And they save themselves and one another. They rely on themselves and one another. They trust themselves and one another. There is no mean girl nonsense. No clique-y cruelty. No forced romance. Just kids in extraordinary circumstances rising to whatever challenges present themselves. With parents who are present, accounted for, kind, and involved.

Who knew that was possible?

Get on this one, all!

And don’t worry – Cassidy’s story doesn’t end with City of Ghosts. There’s at least one more entry in the series forthcoming.