Thursday, July 5, 2018

Out of the Wild Night by Blue Balliet


Title: Out of the Wild Night
Author: Blue Balliett
Pages: 291
Finished: July 5, 2018

First Sentence: My story begins at dusk, on the edges, by the shore and around the graveyards.

Summary: The ghosts on Nantucket are disturbed. Their houses are being renovated and everything that ties them to their island is disappearing. With the help of some local kids, they fight back. But the line between life and death is blurred and all is not as it seems.

Thoughts: We put this book on the middle school reading list this summer, and my boss recommended it as being very odd. It interested me. I'll say, she's right. The book took a while to figure out. The story switches between a first person narrator in Mary Chase - a ghost, and third person as it follows the story of the kids around. Many random things are mentioned and seemingly thrown aside, only to be brought back in later.

I really had a difficult time with the narrator switches. I also never saw the twist coming, though it seems I should have. I blame it on my broken foot that's causing lots of stress. But even with the twist, I felt there were a lot of things still left unexplained at the end.

I did like how, for a ghost story, it wasn't as scary as I was expecting. I'm set to read another one after this that is a bit more horrific, and I'm going to listen to the next in the Lockhart and Co series, so I have plenty of creepiness coming up.

Would I recommend this? I don't know. There's a lot about the line between renovating, restoring, and gutting houses. It's a bit of a battle, though seen through a kid's eyes, it's not so annoying. The narration switches was hard though. And I don't know who I'd recommend it to. Kids wanting a scary story would find this benign and dull. It doesn't fit your traditional fantasy story. It's just kind of... there. I'm not even that thrilled that I read it. 

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