This is story reaches out and grabs you from
the beginning. I hav enjoyed Kenneth Oppel’s books and was excited to see a new one. This is an adventurous and spooky middle grade book that has a lighthearted tone and a fast pace. The creepy level is perfect for middle grade.

This is an adventurous and spooky middle grade book that has a lighthearted tone and a fast pace. It has a cast of lovable characters (both dead and alive) and a lot of action to keep young readers engaged. The one element of the story that really didn't work for me was the plot line involving the main character's father. It felt rushed and struck a jarring note for me. I enjoyed all the friendships and the bit of blooming romance in the book. And the ghostly elements seemed just the right level of scary for middle grade readers. I think this will be a big hit with young readers looking for something creepy and action packed.

This book starts off with a bang, with the opening lines about killing ghosts, and never lets up much from there. And what I loved the most was that I had no idea how the protagonists were going to solve their problem, the problem of how to kill a ghost.

The story starts off with a lighthouse keeper and his daughter, Rebecca. It is going to be her first time learning about the mysterious work her father does as a lighthousekeeper, and when she learns it involves killing evil ghosts, she is so excited.

Turns out that is also the same day she dies, because of the evil ghost.

And it turns out that she doesn’t awaken until nearly 200 years later, when Gabe, a young man who gives tours of the self-same lighthouse, mentions her name in every tour. He does it because their murder was never solved, and this awakens her ghost, and that is how we learn that the evil ghost is till out there and needs to be stoped, with something called a ghost light.

Gabe, and his two friends spend the rest of the book searching for the said ghost light, getting it, losing it, getting it. There are so many false hopes, and setbacks, but all in all a very exciting tale.

The action takes place in and around Toronto, and although I am not familiar with it, the way the story is told makes it feel quite real.

<em>Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.</em>

I received a complimentary digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Ghostlight by Kenneth Oppel creates a supernatural, fantasy world set in mordent day Toronto. The plot moves very quickly, and the tensions are always high. So this is perfect for younger readers who might not have the best attention span! The supernatural parts of this book can be spooky, but nothing too scary or graphic. The tension is built well in the beginning and increases as the plot moves along. Once you get into the story, you won't be able to put the book down.

While the plot is certainly entertaining, the key too this story's success is definitely the different relationships between the characters. Of course, Gabe and Rebecca's relationship is front and center. And Oppel does a good job of building up their character development while also moving the plot along. Gabe and his mother also had sweet and realistic interactions. Callie and Turi were adorable, both separately and their interactions together.

I do wish there were more interactions between Rebecca, Callie, and Yuri, I think some of the sacrifices/efforts would have made more sense if their relationship was built up more. I also think the relationship between Gabe and brother could have also been developed. The references to Andrew were scattered around the book, but it never resulted in even an interaction.

Fans of uber-creepy ghost stories will thoroughly enjoy this imaginative story of lighthouse keepers who protect the living from evil ghosts through the use of special lenses that blast the ghosts apart.

There is a nice blend of past and present here, with the ghost from the past interacting with three young people in present-day Toronto. The ghosts are just scary enough, although the Main Ghost, Nicholas Viker, is pretty alarming. The friendship among the three human protagonists is nicely drawn, as are the interactions betwene ghosts and humans.

Fans of YA paranormal stories will pick this one up.

Ghost light begins with a very scary scene that gets the book started off with a bang!

Gabe, a teenager, is earning money over the summer as a tour guide for a haunted lighthouse. His summer job is scaring tourists with ghost stories. He even embellishes the facts he has been given concerning the haunting to make his spiel scarier. He’s quite good at this until his job takes a terrifying turn as he accidentally summons the spirit of a dead girl. This girl now awakened, has demands. Gabe and friends encounter some pretty terrifying situations involving nice and also very wicked and dangerous dead folk.

The dead girl awakened is Rebecca Strand who was just sixteen when she and her father fell to their deaths from the top of the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse in 1839. Just how they fell remains a mystery if they actually fell or were they pushed? . So even today their ghosts haunt the lighthouse since the event of well over a century ago.

Even though Gabe tells this story every day on his ghost tour on Toronto Island, he himself doesn’t believe in ghosts. That is until he finds himself face to face with Rebecca Strand. The true story of her death is far more terrifying than any ghost tale Gabe has told. Rebecca reveals that her father was a member of the Order, a secret society devoted to protecting the world from “the wakeful and wicked dead”—malevolent spirits like Viker, the ghost responsible for their deaths. Now it seems that Viker’s ghost is growing ever stronger and more powerful. Now Gabe and his friends must find a way to stop Viker before they all end up walking among the lost souls.

While some scenes and the story were quite captivating, I felt the text a little long and wordy. Still this is quite a creepy tale that should be popular among middle school and young adult readers.