Fiction: The Dollhouse: A Ghost Story

Author Illustrator Publisher
   
Charis Cotter   Penguin Random House Canada

 

Alice is not having summer she expected: Ghosts.

The worst summer ever. First, her parents are splitting up, then she has to live in a creepy house in a totally different town, and then Alice starts seeing things. It all started with the accident on the train. But is seems that Alice experienced two totally different accidents and now she wonders why she is seeing ghosts or if she is time travelling. One thing is for certain, the dollhouse that Alice finds seems to hold the key to her secret and the many secrets that the old house holds.

Questions:

  • What qualities does Alice have in trying to solve the mystery of the Dollhouse?
  • Life can change quickly. How does Alices’s life change?
  • Do you think that it is Alice wants to live in the world of the Dollhouse?
  • There are times that you never get to know the full story. Are you OK with that?
  • Which story do you like better – supernatural mystery or medical situation?

Reviews:

Cosmic C

The Dollhouse is a ghost story about a girl called Alice moves in to an old woman’s house in the country side with her mother after her parents split up. It’s her mother’s new job to care for this lady. On the train ride there, the train has an accident and she gets knocked unconscious although the doctors tell her mother afterwards that it’s just a mild concussion. One day, at the new house she discovers a secret passageway to the attic and finds a dollhouse which is an exact replica of the mansion she is staying in. After that, she starts to have strange dreams that seem to transport her into the dollhouse world. When her and her new friend change the dolls’ clothes and other things in the dollhouse, the changes are reflected in her dreams. The weird thing is that the same happens the other way around; if something happens in the dollhouse in her dreams, then it is reflected into real life. Alice then has to figure out what is real and what is not.

This book was a real page turner; once I started reading it was hard to stop. At some points in the story, I found it a bit spooky, which made me read even faster as I wanted to find out what would happen next. I liked the characters in the book. They didn’t seem like regular people, they all had little quirks that made them interesting. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a good mystery story and likes to get spooked just a little bit.

SD20 Webster Elementary Red Cedar Readers

I honestly loved this Red Cedar. It had a great storyline and was really well written. I couldn’t stop reading this book. There was always something going on so I never got bored. I recommend this book to Grade 4 and up because it is quite long. I rate this book a 5. 

The Dollhouse is a scary book. It has some scary parts and some not. There are some very confusing parts. I recommend this  book to people who like scary stories. I rate this book a ⅘. I would read it again.

This was an interesting story. This is a ghost story but I didn’t think it was very frightening. It was sort of relatable in some ways and it was very descriptive. When I was reading it, I found that I was getting lost in the book like in a maze, not daydreaming. I thought this book went by fast and slow at the same time. The chapters are also really short. I rate this a 3/5. 

I really enjoyed this book. I had never heard of the author, Charis Cotter before reading this book, but now I want to read more books by her. I would recommend this book to anyone between the ages of eleven and fourteen who enjoy fantasy books with complicated plots. I really liked this book and I hope that you do too.

I thought this book was mediocre. It was very confusing and strange at parts, but also kind of creepy. The dollhouse and its effects were really weird and scary. I would recommend this book to anyone from Grades 6-7 or anyone that likes a good mystery.