The Deep End of Fear
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Let Sleeping Ghosts Lie
Twelve years ago Kate's family left the Westbrook estate on a stormy night, just after young Ashley Westbrook drowned in an icy pond. Now kate, alone in the world, has returned to the estate to tutor another spoiled Westbrook child, Patrick. The seven-year-old says he talks to Ashley by the pond. He does dangerous, deadly things because, he says, "Ashley dared me to." Just as Ashley once dared a shy, little Kate twelve years ago.
But at seventeen Kate is not so easily intimidated by "Ashley" or hostile members of her family or the forbidding housekeeper. Then Sam, the handsome stranger to whom kate is irresistibly drawn, reveals a tragic piece of the puzzle that connects him to Kate. Sam tells Kate to leave -- either out of concern for her or due to a festering anger, she's not sure. But kate will not abandon Patrick to the evil that is haunting him and threatens to destroy them all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Launching the author's Dark Secrets series, this perkily paced if predictable tale centers on 16-year-old Megan, summoned to visit her grandmother in the sprawling Maryland house the family has owned for generations. Years before, the woman had disowned her daughter, Megan's adoptive mother, and this visit will be Megan's first meeting with her. Megan is shocked when she first drives up to the family home--she recognizes it from recurring dreams. Within, Grandmother is ill-tempered and unwelcoming, as is Matt, Megan's cousin, who has lived with Grandmother since his parents' difficult divorce. Chandler (At First Sight) lays on the plot's supernatural elements with a heavy hand: Megan hears that her grandmother's house is haunted, learns that she is the exact age at which Grandmother's sister and rival, Avril, mysteriously died and--one night after hearing a voice introducing itself as Avril--sees an apparition of a girl in a mirror and then a vision of herself (or is it Avril?) lying in her bed, dead. The resolution of the plot, which involves reincarnation, may be sufficiently far-flung to put off some readers, but most are likely to find Chandler's easygoing yet tight writing style worth the journey out there. Ages 11-14. FYI: Elizabeth Chandler is the pen name of picture book author M.C. Helldorfer.
