Stars: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is a book which you will want to have in your classroom to help children explore magic and hauntings! Valerie has always lived (and haunted!) at Lightning Falls but when mysterious Joe turns up, she gets told her world may not be the one she knew…

Today I am thrilled to have a guest blog post from the author, Amy Wilson, all about ghosts! It’s a topic I’ve always been interested in (and the debate about whether they exist!) so I loved reading Amy’s insight as much as I enjoyed reading her book!

The Thing About Ghosts…

I love to write a ghost. I love to spend time with them, to explore who they were when they were alive and what sorts of things they might be able to do now that they are a ghost. Before I wrote Lightning Falls I had written one other ghost character – Stella’s nan in Shadows of Winterspell. Her story was that she had stayed around, using magic, because Stella still needed her. She got tired very easily, and sometimes drifted off, though never for too long, and I so enjoyed writing her.

In Lightning Falls I got to play with a whole house of ghosts! I had Meg, who is the ghost-sister of my main character Valerie; Great Aunt Flo, one of the original residents, and Cecil, who used to be caretaker of the ghost house, generations ago. I won’t list more, though there are plenty – it’s fair to say that all together they make the ghost house chaotic, a little bit wild and very unusual, which is just my favourite sort of place to set a story.

There is a sadness in a ghost, I think. Even though this is a happy, established family, and they love each other dearly, and even though there’s nowhere else they’d rather be, they have all had previous lives, and previous families, who they miss sometimes. I wanted to acknowledge that, while at the same time letting them have lots of fun in the present day, as Valerie delves into long-kept secrets. Meg especially is hugely invested in the adventure – though it makes her feel a bit vulnerable, because she doesn’t want to be left behind. This conflict, plus all of her love for an Agatha Christie mystery and much more, makes Meg one of my very favourite characters, and a brilliant sister to Valerie.

As to whether I believe in ghosts myself – well yes, I do. I’m not sure about whether they live in the present; perhaps they’re an echo of a moment in a person’s life, that has left its mark on the world long after they’ve gone, perhaps they’re something else entirely. I don’t like to question it too forensically, some things are supposed to be mysterious and ghosts definitely fall into that category!

If you like the sound of this book, buy it here.

Emily x

📚 Book gifted by publisher.