Once a year, a young girl is sacrificed in service to a curse that has held the town captive for decades. Smiths Hollow has a dark secret, however. But I promise you, the ’80s were kind of awful. Sure, we get mentions of popular bands and movies of the time (we know Jake is cool because he wears a Siouxsie and the Banshees T-shirt), but it’s not done in such a way that we feel Henry is jumping up and down shouting “OMG you guys, remember the ’80s!?” Yes, I do, thank you. But Miranda is outgrowing all of that, and Lauren isn’t sure she’s ready to follow where Miranda wants to lead, although Lauren is not unpleasantly surprised to be attracting the interest of senior boy Jake. Lauren and Miranda have always enjoyed hanging out in the woods behind their neighborhood, meeting up at the Ghost Tree, a huge old tree split down the middle by a lightning strike in some distant ancient time. Lauren lives with her widowed mother, Karen, and her four-year-old brother David, who seems unusually observant and grown up for his age.
Lauren diMucci is fourteen and awkward, slightly behind the puberty curve from her bestie, Miranda, who is putting away childish things and throwing herself perhaps a bit too enthusiastically into the world of nice clothes and makeup and boys with cars. The setting is Smiths Hollow, Illinois, 1985. But if you’re a horror fan looking for a brisk, bloody read, The Ghost Tree delivers. It also has some key story flaws that, on balance, do have a negative impact on its overall success. And it captures the fraught realities of teenage life with almost flawless believability. It pulls off the exceptional feat of setting its story in the mid-’80s without recourse to an endless stream of hand-wavy (and cringe-inducing) pop cultural references. It’s addictively readable, tense and scary in all of its best moments.
Share book reviews and ratings with Thomas, and even join a book club on Goodreads.ĭespite its title, Christina Henry’s The Ghost Tree is not a ghost story, but a story about a town under a curse, combined with nostalgia for some good old fashioned 1980s slashers. Book cover artwork is copyrighted by its respective artist and/or publisher. All reviews and site design © by Thomas M.
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