Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Dead Voices (Small Spaces #2)

Dead Voices. (Small Spaces #2) Katherine Arden. 2019. 256 pages. [Source: Library]

First sentence: Winter in East Evansburg, and just after dusk, five people in a beat-up old Subaru peeled out of town in a snowstorm.

Premise/plot: Dead Voices stars three friends whom we met in Small Spaces: Ollie, Coco, and Brian. The three are spending the first week of winter vacation—along with Coco’s mom and Ollie’s dad—at a soon to be opened ski resort, Mount Hemlock. The storm could be a sign of things to come. If they are advising people to stay off the roads and stay home, then you should listen. But that would be a very short and incredibly boring book! Dangers abound in this one, especially if you’re a child. If you’re an adult, well, then you just cook, eat, sleep, and never observe your surroundings.

My thoughts: This one promises to be a delightfully spooky ghost story. A family is trapped by a blizzard in an haunted house. That’s the premise. Lots of foreboding and build up. One child keeps seeing and hearing ghosts. Another keeps having dreams. Combined there are plenty of warnings. Warnings like don’t listen to the dead, stay out of closets, never look in mirrors. Yet. Yet what do our narrators do?!?! Listen to the dead, look in closets, and look in mirrors. Part of me was screaming at the characters. The other part of me was racing through the book.

I do not want to include any spoilers in my review. But I do have some thoughts on this one. It is not a little creepy—but very creepy. The adventures with a certain someone from a previous book seem to be just beginning. The books are definitely more connected than I originally thought.

On a side note, I did not like the inclusion of the Ouija board and the subplot of trying to communicate with the dead. The first book was creepy but not in a kids are interested in the occult way.

I do like that there are definite clues throughout. Even though the characters themselves didn’t seem to have eyes that see and ears that hear.


© 2019 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

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