Just Jennifer

Rooms by Lauren Oliver (Ecco Press, September 2014)

YA novelist Lauren Oliver turns her talents to adult novels in this creepy tale an estranged family, the house their father left behind and the ghosts that inhabit it.  Richard Walker has died and left his country house full of detritus and mementos of a life not so well lived, along with two former residents, Alice and Sandra, who have been long dead.  Caroline, Walker’s ex-wife, is embittered and more than a little bit of a lush, feels that someone owes her something in life; his daughter Minna has some anger issues and isn’t anxious to let any of it go any time soon.  Only his young son Trenton is sensitive to the life, or afterlife, still within the walls, but this already troubled young man can barely help himself never mind two trapped spirits.  Engagingly told, each chapter focuses on a room in the house, each room revealing the secrets it has to give up, the rest filled in by Alice and Sandy.  A third ghost arrives and begins to communicate with Trenton causing a convergence of events that will ultimately and curiously heal the house and the people within.  This creepy tale will keep you turning pages late in the nights as you listen to the creaks and groans of your house and wonder who lives within your rooms.  A LibraryReads (http://libraryreads.org/) pick for September.