The Agony House

August 1, 2018

Gr 7-10-When 17-year-old Denise's parents move her to New Orleans, planning to fix up an old house and turn it into a bed-and-breakfast, accidents start occurring and Denise quickly realizes that the house is haunted. The classic haunted house story gets an update with a story line involving a 1950's era comic book featuring a female hero that is atypical for its time. Scenes from the comic book, which are sporadically interspersed into the narrative, add visual variety to the story and intensify the mood. Each small horror within the house builds to a large climax and a twist ending as Denise uses the comics to solve a mystery. Readers will empathize with Denise's financial troubles as she and her family struggle to pay for food when all their money goes into the house. The issue of gentrification, particularly in a Hurricane Katrina-affected New Orleans, is woven in, though at times didactically. Text messages (including some dated teen textspeak), emails, and ghost whispers are printed in blue in order to stand out and match the comics' color palette. VERDICT The format of this ghost story is inviting and while never truly horrifying, younger YA readers will be satisfied with the chills provided.-Carrie Shaurette, Dwight-Englewood School, NJ

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 15, 2018
A white family's attempts to renovate a storm-wracked Victorian New Orleans house are complicated by bitterly contending ghosts.The resident spirits aren't particularly reticent either, readily manifesting not only to 17-year-old Denise and her newlywed mother and stepfather, but to visiting neighbors as well--as a whiff of perfume, creeping shadows, a falling ceiling, and other ominous portents. But rather than being a stereotypical screamer, Denise has much in common (characterwise, at least) with intrepid, gun-toting Lucida Might, girl crime fighter and star of a 1950s manuscript comic Denise finds in the attic. Priest (Brimstone, 2017, etc.) ably weaves contemporary issues and a feminist strand into this fantasy as, while briskly fending off ghostly visitations and searching out clues to the house's violent past, Denise makes new friends and encounters pushback from some St. Roch neighbors rightfully leery of white gentrifiers. Highlighted by a wonderfully melodramatic climax, the author brings her plotlines to upbeat resolutions with a thrilling discovery, a revelation about the comic's author, and a degree of general community acceptance of Denise and her family. Nearly every character's race, white or black, is carefully but unobtrusively specified. O'Connor (The Altered History of Willow Sparks, 2018) inserts multiple pages from the comic and atmospheric stand-alone illustrations all printed in haint blue.Conflicts, ectoplasmic and otherwise, laid to rest in a deliciously creepy setting. (Graphic/novel hybrid ghost fantasy. 11-13)

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Starred review from August 1, 2018
Grades 7-10 *Starred Review* Following up on a successful collaboration with Kali Ciesemier in I Am Princess X? (2016), Priest pairs with O'Connor to neatly weave together the history of comic books and contemporary concerns about gentrification into an eerie ghost story set in a ramshackle house that's as much a character as the people living in it. Denise, her mom, and her stepdad have just moved into a nearly destroyed, once-beautiful house in New Orleans, and almost right away, Denise starts noticing odd things. First, they're harmless, if creepy, but later, unexplained, dangerous accidents happen as the family renovates the house. But the comic book manuscript Denise finds carefully hidden in the attic (pages of which appear throughout the novel) is the key to the source of the poltergeists. Meanwhile, Denise's neighbors are uneasy about outsiders capitalizing on cheap property in New Orleans, and Priest does a great job of skillfully including the important conversations Denise and her family have with their new community. At its heart, though, this is a ghost story, and Priest excels at building palpable atmosphere: Denise's parents' anxiety about their shoestring budget, the sweltering New Orleans summer heat, the disrepair of the house ( soggy plaster fell from the studs like wet cake ), and the increasingly terrifying haunting. Dynamic characters and a surprising mystery round out this sharp, satisfying, and engrossingly spooky story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2019
Seventeen-year-old Denise and her family return to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to flip an old house into a bed and breakfast. Soon Denise learns the house is haunted by two ghosts, whose deaths may be connected to a comic book Denise finds abandoned in her attic. That comic (illustrated in sharp monochromatic blue) is interspersed between chapters of this engaging, atmospheric paranormal mystery.

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)