Book: Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

Published July 2020 by HarperTeen|368 pages

Where I Got It: I borrowed the e-book from the library

Series: Ghost Wood Song #1

Genre: YA Contemporary

Sawkill Girls meets The Hazel Wood in this lush and eerie debut, where the boundary between reality and nightmares is as thin as the veil between the living and the dead. 

If I could have a fiddle made of Daddy’s bones, I’d play it. I’d learn all the secrets he kept.

Shady Grove inherited her father’s ability to call ghosts from the grave with his fiddle, but she also knows the fiddle’s tunes bring nothing but trouble and darkness.

But when her brother is accused of murder, she can’t let the dead keep their secrets.

In order to clear his name, she’s going to have to make those ghosts sing.

Family secrets, a gorgeously resonant LGBTQ love triangle, and just the right amount of creepiness make this young adult debut a haunting and hopeful story about facing everything that haunts us in the dark.

I liked this one!  Ghost Wood Song was creepy and haunting and quite the mystery!

So, Shady.  I liked her and it had to have been hard to lose her dad and gain a stepfather she didn’t like.  I love that she plays the fiddle, and and seeing Cedar play at an open mike opened up a world of possibilities in terms of music.  I get she doesn’t want to stop playing with her friends but I also get wanting more, and feeling like others are sparking creativity and possibilities.

She also has a lot going on- family issues, raising the dead by playing the fiddle, family mysteries…It was interesting to see how everything unraveled and how ghosts were laid to rest.  And I get why she wanted to help her brother.  So many people had no problem believing that he did what he did, and even though he wasn’t the one who did it, it was easy for people to pin it on him.  It made me angry, that they were able to get a teen to take the fall for something they didn’t do.  And unfortunately, this is a town where no one would believe him if he told the truth.  It’s sad, but something I can see happening.

The atmosphere was creepy and haunting and it seeped into everything going on.  It was very much there, and there was no forgetting it.  It felt a little oppressive at times, like something wasn’t right.  I mean, things weren’t right, as we find out by the end of the book.  But there was no escaping it.  It just had a really good balance of family secrets and creepiness and ghosts.

I wasn’t all that interested in the other characters.  They were alright but I wasn’t invested in them.  This was a book that was definitely about Shady and everything she’s trying to figure out.  Figure it out, she did, and with the help of her aunt and brother, she was able to do what she had to in order to get rid of the ghosts.

3 stars.  I liked Ghost Wood Song but didn’t love it.  The atmosphere was creepy and seeped into everything, but I wasn’t enthused with a lot of the characters.