Searching Amazon for a haunted house, Tiffany D. Jackson's White Smoke was at the top of the search results. After reading the synopsis, I kinda shrugged because it didn't seem to offer up anything new, but Jackson was a New-to-Me author, so I figured why not. The fact that it was classified as YA wasn't even an issue.
When I say it didn't seem to offer anything new, it deals with a family that is uprooted and relocates to a different state, unknowingly taking up residence in the local haunted house. Jackson throws all the trappings at us -- squeaking floorboards; offensive odors with no evident source; items disappearing, never to be found; animals behaving strangely; shadowy figures; and strange whisperings -- but she does it gradually, without overwhelming the reader. She also creates a rather dark, in-depth history of the location, which she does an excellent job weaving it in to the details of the haunting. That doesn't mean the book doesn't have any problems or issues. It does, and they're bad enough (at least for me) where I seriously considered putting this in the DNF file several times, but I persevered, and was glad I did, as Jackson delivers a twist that takes it beyond the run-of-the-mill haunted house. She also delivers some genuinely harrowing scenes that will keep the reader on the edge of their seats.
What was so bad that it almost made me stop reading? The central character, Marigold, suffers from crippling anxiety that centers around bedbugs, and she's obsessed with the need to get high, and the reader is hit over the head with these two things repeatedly, to the point where it feels like the author needed filler to reach a certain word count. If you can overlook these two issues, White Smoke is definitely worth checking out. I know I'll be checking out more books by the author. Final score? 4/5 stars
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