While Lauren has had to deal with a lot in her short life, and becomes burdened with the truth behind Smiths Hollow’s prosperity, she’s nonetheless prone to the typical histrionics and brattiness, with her poor mother often bearing the brunt of her moods. Like Lauren, I found mid-teen boys really underwhelming with their spots and preoccupation with showing off to their friends, and got very bored watching them play video games! I’ve also known girls like Miranda who, seemingly in the blink of an eye, went from being gawky and childlike to sophisticated and boy-crazy. Lauren and Miranda are very realistic teenage characters. Henry successfully portrays how a community can become very insular and hostile to ‘outsiders’ when it’s largely self-reliant and has little contact with the wider world. The 1980s small-town setting gives off a strong Stranger Things vibe, with hints of Stephen King and John Connolly too. Suffice it to say, though, it’s a gripping read with a number of appealing gothic/horror elements: a curse with a backstory straight from a fairy tale, witches and monsters, children with psychic abilities (not just Lauren, but also her four-year-old brother David), cover-ups from on high, and collective amnesia and hysteria.
It’s hard to say much more about this book without giving away major spoilers. Yet the case doesn’t make the top headlines, and the local parents seem to forget the incident pretty quickly and continue to let their children play in the woods - because something is very wrong in Smiths Hollow. Lauren experiences a frightening vision of two girls from out of town being murdered in the same woods as her father - and it proves to be real when their heads and entrails are discovered close by, in the garden of local curmudgeon Mrs Schneider. In the run-up to high school, her oldest friend, Miranda, is growing away from her, and she’s also constantly arguing with her mother. We witness much of the action through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Lauren, who’s grieving for her father, who was found brutally murdered in the nearby woods the previous year. The Ghost Tree takes place in the 1980s, in the small town of Smiths Hollow, Illinois.
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