"Teeming with adventure, ghosts and kooky characters, a lyrical, magnetic mystery unfolds as a girl searches for her missing parents"
Eibhilis Carcione’s Welcome to Dead Town Raven McKay sees its endearing protagonist embark on a quest to discover what happened to her vanished parents. Suffused in spooky atmosphere, it’s a tonic for readers who delight in magical mysteries with quirky charm.
Although twelve-year-old Raven’s new foster placement in Grave’s Pass sees her move in with a relative — Kitty, her father’s third cousin once removed — her nerves are palpable, and exquisitely described: “Her stomach knotted like a pretzel… She was a stranger who would have to face school and a new town”. What’s more, Grave’s Pass is a “town where the living and the dead live side by side”. A place in which ghostly “pooka horses” gallop by, and skeletons and zombies hang out with “humes”, as humans are known in these parts.
After settling in with the suitcase her mother had said not to open “until the time is right”, Raven discovers her new school is attended by humes and dead students. While her magnificent shiny-plumed hat draws compliments from some of her fellow pupils, others are less kind, and she also has to get used to ghosts passing through her.
When she sneaks out to watch the Dead Town Parade, Raven can’t resist the temptation to return to the town, not least because she wonders whether there might be a connection between the black butterfly on her mother’s suitcase and the black butterflies she saw around Dead Town. And so the stage is set for a gloriously gothic mystery as Raven undertakes a search for the truth, and her parents.
With a cast of charismatically eccentric characters populating its rich story world, Welcome to Dead Town Raven McKay is a welcomingly refreshing addition to the canon of magical Middle Grade novels.
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