The Whispering House

by Rebecca Wade

Maisie Holt.

This is her book.

It's an old house, one her family plans to stay in for only a short while; but for Hannah Price, secrets soon come creeping out of every corner of Cowleigh Lodge.

First there's the old and dusty book of children's fairy tales that belonged to a young girl named Maisie. Hannah learns that the girl died mysteriously at age eleven in this very house nearly 140 years ago.

Then, when Hannah draws a portrait of Maisie, things begin to fall apart. The house seems to be reverting to its nineteenth-century form, and Hannah's not sure whether it or Maisie herself is sending her messages. Hannah must solve the mystery of Maisie's death, because if she doesn't help her, Maisie may never leave Hannah alone. . . .

Rebecca Wade has created a haunting story that will capture readers' imaginations until the very last page.

Genres: Middle Grade, Mystery, Fantasy, Paranormal, Childrens, Fiction, Ghosts

264 pages, Hardcover

First published May 22, 2012

About the author

Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[BookishStitcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up

This was a creepy middle grade novel about a family who moves into a very old house with a secret. When the curious daughter and her friend find an abandoned doll in a sealed up room strange things begin to happen. Can they uncover why the young girl who lived in the house 150 years ago mysteriously died at the age of 11?

This wasn't the most amazing middle grade story, but I was interested to find out what happened. It included some historical bits for young readers and there were some good twists. I would recommend it if you have a younger middle grade child/student who likes creepy books.

[McKenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overuse of adverbs, especially the word slightly. The plot and theme had so much potential but many of the main points fell short. For example, there is a clue given about the main characters involvement and how she's connected to the mystery, it was never fully explained or expanded upon. We were only given vague, lack luster hints at the possibility that something bigger MAY be going on. Some of the more intense parts of the book that actually made it interesting and added substance didn’t quite fit in with the ending. There were some beautiful descriptions and points sprinkled into the book, unfortunately those were surrounded by awkward sentence structure and questionable word choices. I chalk it up to the author being British, perhaps? Enjoyable read but the execution could’ve been so much better.

[Danielle R · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in pretty much one sitting and it definitely kept me entertained. (My fourth grade history teacher should be happy to know that I do remember some facts about Napoleon and that spoiled the twist ending for me!)

Sam and Hannah were fantastic leads and it seemed that they have a history of solving mysteries. Even though this is a standalone book, I liked the history between them. The house was a character all its own and it's wild to think that a whole bedroom would have been turned into a bathroom in modern times. I enjoyed Maisie, her doll, and her lovely dress. (Wonder if she was buried in it?)

Quite an enjoyable little ghost story (which would be made even better with no former knowledge of Napoleon's death). 4/5

[Katharine Ott · Rating 2 out of 5]

"The Whispering House" - written by Rebecca Wade and published in 2012 by Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. A set of school-age amateur sleuths readily accept the strange happenings at an old run-down house including ghostly apparitions, scary dreams and other spooky events. Found items include a bedraggled doll that spurs an investigation into the death of a young girl who lived in the house in the 1870s. I found this book to be quite similar to Holly Black's "Doll Bones" and just as uninspiring an adventure. The writing was stilted and the story line forced - it just did not deliver an enjoyable reading experience.

[Chelsi Ulrich · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well first I think it’s perfect for younger kiddos. I think they would rate it much higher then myself. It was just a little not riveting for me. I think kids would find it so and enjoy it. It’s not too scary so they wouldn’t be okay. I think parts of it were cute but definitely not something I would be dying to read again. I do love the closure that was given and I love the result and explanation of it. There is one part in the book, I won’t spoil it, but it’s during the power outage that I thought was totally useless and was only intended to be scary but it wasn’t. Definitely wasn’t needed in the book

[Josette Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was really good. The storyline began as a suspected murder and had a very different ending. I loved how the house change as more was found out about Maisie. I really like books that grab me from the beginning and keep me hooked until I am finished reading. I was so engrossed in this novel, I did realize how much time had passed. I would recommend this book to those who like books about ghosts that are not to scary.

[Leah Agirlandaboy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a perfect spooky mystery for the middle-grade crowd. I read it to both kids when they were nine, and they loved it. It’s ghosty and haunted-housey but mostly focuses on persistent kids putting clues together. I love the way there’s a little science and history mixed in, and the reveal is very satisfying.

Note that it’s a sequel (the copy I have buries this info in the author bio), but you don’t need to have read the first one first. I wish this author had written more books!

[Lissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written with as much life as a wet fish slapping on dry pavement. This is the slowest middle grade book I've ever read. Chapters where nothing happens at all. I wanted to find out the ending but I struggled to even find interest in a page. The author had no umph in her writing. At. All.

[Shreya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book...Rebecca Wade has done a certainly good job in writing this story....

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

My 13-year-old daughter and I read this one together and we enjoyed it very much.

[Shreya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book...Rebecca Wade has done a certainly good job in writing this story....

[usagi ☆ミ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was a pretty smooth and easy read, and pretty short, too. For this Halloween season, I think that "The Whispering House" has a lot going for it (even if the trope used feels a bit tired in current literature, MG/YA or otherwise), and I think it's going to do very well with the MG crowd.

I think the largest problem I had with the book was the age of protagonist (and her bff) - we're told early on that they're fourteen, but whoa, I did not see fourteen there. I saw maybe somewhere between nine and eleven, but nowhere even near fourteen years old. I think this is because of the storytelling - I can see where Wade wanted to do the old-timey 3rd close narration in a gothic style, but it just didn't really entirely work here as she couldn't seem to settle her characters' ages compared with that of the age of their behavior.

More on the narration - it felt at times there was a little too much telling over showing, but the times we got the showing were pretty great. Wade definitely can use her sensory imagery and language when she wants/needs to, and that was pleasing to the eye to read. I just wish she'd used it a bit more.

However, this is a fun little mystery - light, fluffy, and an easy read, very solidly built with an easy-to-follow plot with no sub-plots. I wish it had been creepier (there's a way to do it, even for the MG crowd that makes things appropriately scary), but it turns out to be more of a mystery book than a phantasmagorically inclined one. Either way, I had a lot of fun reading it, and I think MG/tween readers will, too. However, I think the YA crowd (even young YA), will find this a bit too simple for them.

"The Whispering House" is out now from Katherine Tegen/Harper Children's books, so be sure to check it out! If you're looking for a fun spooky read for your MG/tween reader this Halloween, consider checking this one out.

(posted to goodreads, shelfari, and birthofanewwitch.wordpress.com)

[Alice]

Hannah starts to have strange, intense dreams about being under a canopy of glittering green leaves with a strange, blankly staring face next to hers, when her family relocates to an old Victorian house. There, she finds a dusty book of fairy tales. The book is inscribed, "To Maisie From Your Loving Papa, Christmas 1876." Upon the discovery of Maisie Holt's gravestone in the neighborhood graveyard, Hannah finds out that Maisie died when she was only eleven years old. Hannah decides to find out what happened to Maisie with the help of her best friend Sam.

Hannah is smart, and she can put the clues together. However, all the people she gets in touch with easily gives her the necessary information needed to solve the mystery. She is too perfect, as is her situation, making her seem unreal. Sam is more interesting, and he is the one that helps Hannah make sense about the clues she finds and the dreams she has.

The ending of book is a bit let down, as it isn't nearly as strong as the rest of the book. Still, I do love the plot for the book and how the story weaves the past and the present into one by drawing on intriguing pieces of history, and I found the truth behind the dreams interesting. The Whispering House delivers plenty of spookiness for younger readers, but the older tweens and teens will find this book too simple.

Note - I didn't realize until I was reading this book that it is a book two. The first book about Hannah Price is called The Theft & The Miracle.


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For more of my reviews, visit my blog Imaginary Reads.

[Stacie (MagicOfBooks) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book through the Goodreads First-Reads giveaway.

Well, this was certainly a cute book. I wasn't jumping up and down in my sit thinking that this was the greatest book in the world, but it was still really cute and had a great little mystery to it that I think kids and teens would enjoy.

I don't know how I feel about the protagonist Hannah Price, though. I mean, I didn't dislike her---she wasn't an idiot and she put two-and-two together through the course of the story. I saw another review from someone about Hannah in the first book of this series, and that person described Hannah as a Mary-Sue, which I actually agree with. Hannah had no flaws and everyone loved her. It seemed like every person she came in contact with easily gave up information and never once questioned, "who the hell is this girl?" To be honest, I was more interested in Hannah's friend, Sam. He had flaws and an interesting story. The whole story could have easily been told from his POV.

Not sure how I feel about the final big reveal of the mystery either. It seemed to come together too easily and too quickly. And it sort of felt anti-climatic to some degree. I think I was expecting more.

I think Rebecca Wade did a fantastic job of describing the house and it's mutation from the present into the past. I certainly would not want to live in that house! It seemed a character in it's own right.

Overall, a cute book, and very fast and easy to read.

[Allison Ford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hannah's family has temporarily moved into an old, hard-to-rent house across town, and creepy things start piling up in the house. A little girl named Maisie used to live in the house, and she died as a child, perhaps killed by witchcraft. Locked rooms, an old calendar page, a book of fairy tales, bad dreams, a weirdly marked doll, poltergeist-type activities, and Hannah's own drawing of the dead girl combine to make Hannah jump and worry--and try to solve the mystery of what really happened to Maisie. The weirdness escalates and escalates until Hannah has haunted encounters with Maisie themselves. I thought the doll was the creepiest thing it just seemed really odd. The book never really got boring so I was finding myself wanting to keep reading it. The author took the story in an unexpectedly sweet direction so I thought that was nice, and she also added a little bit of history into it which was cool too. This is a ghost/mystery story that kind of starts out scarier than it ends, but a nice ghost story for kids who like to be scared. This would be set for a middle grade audience because of it being scary. It scared at one point, and I had to put the book down because I was reading it at night.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book in the Goodreads First Reads giveaway, it came yesterday and I was so excited to read it.

I liked the book, it was a good premise and the characters were mostly well rounded. I didn't care for the cover art too much. If I was just browsing the shelves at the library this would not be one of the books that I picked up based on how it looked. However the story line was solid. I honestly couldn't put it down once I started. I'll admit that parts of it did creep me out a bit, but it wasn't a horror story by any means.

The only thing I really didn't like about the book was chapter 29 "Connecting". I liked the idea of communication through a scrabble game instead of it being a ouija board, but the way Rebecca Wade detailed how the words were played on the board was a little confusing. She spells it out halfway through the chapter but reading that section was a bit hard in trying to figure out the layout of the board.

All in all I would definitely recommend this book to others, especially young adults who are interested in mysteries.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A ghost story set in the summer is a perfect read during afternoon thunderstorms! Fourteen-year-old Hannah and her parents are forced to move into a dilapidated old house while their own home undergoes repairs. Soon Hannah realizes why tenants never stay past June of any given year; aside from the mysterious locked bedroom, Hannah is spooked by visions of the house returning to its original state, unexplained power failures, crashes and bangs from rooms that no one was in, and frightfully accurate dreams of its previous inhabitants. It does not take Hannah long to discover that one of the house's inhabitants died at the age of 11 in 1877, and that she may have been murdered by a member of her own family. The ghost of this young girl begins to beg Hannah to help solve the mystery--but can Hannah piece together two-hundred-year-old clues before the June anniversary of the girl's death?

[Tori · Rating 1 out of 5]

"The Whispering House" is for readers who need a non-scary mystery book with a scientific explanation for everything. This book is part of a series, so it may be a little confusing if you haven't read the first book, which author Rebecca Wade does not mention at all. Don't be fooled by the summary on the inside cover; this book isn't as interesting as the summary makes it seem to be. Wade says that the main characters, Hannah Price, and her friend, Sam Fallon, are 14 years old, but they act like they're six or seven.
Also, although this book is supposed to be a suspenseful, scary mystery, it wasn't any of those things. If you are looking for something that IS all of those things, I suggest the "Books of Elsewhere" series. If you like magic paintings, talking cats, witches, and a strong, caring heroine, these books are for you.
"The Whispering House" is the most terrible mystery/ghost story I have ever read, and I would never recommend it to anyone.

[Meg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway.

I found the writing of this book to be a bit off and amateurish, and the storyline was not well-developed. Part of the issue could be that it was written for children and that the author is British.

I felt that the back story about Hannah and the missing statue from the church could have been great, but it was never fully explained and was only vaguely eluded to. Other parts of the story were not explained well either. Some of the descriptions were overdone, like the author was trying too hard.

There were some great parts to it though. In some areas, it flowed really well. I loved the reasoning given for the death of Maisie, but it didn't make sense with the overall storyline.

I think if this story was reworked and fleshed out a bit, it could be a great story.

[Lena · Rating 4 out of 5]

The whispering House by Rebecca Wade was a thrilling read.It was a total page turner! I felt as if I couldn't really realte to the character in some ways but it was still a cool story.It is about a girl named Hannah who moves into a temporary house,then she starts having nightmares and drew this mysterious girl that she had never seen before.Then she found an old doll in the attic and other things that belonged to a girl who died when she was just 11 about 140 years ago.Then the house stops working and she starts getting these weird messages that say Hannah,Help Me.Hannah needs to solve the mystery of Maisie's death before the house goes back to 140 years ago.I thought this was a good book and an awesome mystery! I would reccommend this to people who like scary stories and books like Lucas and Kari mysteries and Sherlock Holmes.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am pretty sure ghosts don’t get enough love any more, especially the kind that haunts, not the kind you pseudo-make out with. Y’all, when the readathon rolled around, I was totally down for a few hours with a middle grade ghost story, because I knew there would be no kissy faces, just thrills and chills. The Whispering House by Rebecca Wade is a suitably creepy read, with mild flirtation but some totally goose bump inducing scenes — particularly if you are creeped out by dolls. And frankly, I’ll admit, dolls are kind of creepy now that I am an old.
Read the rest of my review here

[RumBelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was slow, dull, disjointed and not typical of a rousing ghost story at all. Many of the "ghostly happenings" were well known and repetitive, right down to objects mysteriously falling off shelves to letter magnets arranging themselves on the fridge. The characters, both modern day, and from the past, didn't have a lot of depth and just did not hold your interest. The plot did not flow evenly either, it just seemed to move from one choppy moment to the next. Overall, not anywhere close to the best ghost story I have read.

[Echo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would probably give this 3.5 stars if I could be that specific with the rating system.
It was a cute book, and I was pleasantly surprised with the ending. I was expecting something predictable, and fortunately, that's not what I got.
I could tell by reading it there must have been a previous book I'd missed out on (though I didn't see mention of a previous book anywhere on the cover), but this one stood very well on its own.

[Elysia Jewel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find it interesting. The best book I've ever had( mystery type ). I the kind of person to dislike mystery books but this one is so well-written that it enchanted me into reading it till the end. I especially like the part where Hannah/Maisie is playing scramble with Sam. And the part where everything is revealed---how she is killed.I got this creepy feeling even when I read this book in broad daylight. Love it! It's especially suitable for kids aged between 10 and 12.

[Kelani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won this book in a free goodreads giveaway. Once I started reading this book I couldn't put it down. .the story line was great, characters were well developed. I felt like the book kept me interested. I wish the bit about the statues would have been explained more, I think that would have made for an interesting sub-story. Cover art could be better. Great story! !!

[Ulrica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book in a giveaway, and didn't realize until I got it that it was not for my age group. I read it anyway, and it was pretty good for the age group it was written for (8-12). it was certainly interesting, and I enjoyed reading it. All in all, it's a good childrens' book (if they don't get freaked out).

[Kassandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

*********Goodreads Winner**********

The book was a good read, but not something that I would usaully read. Now, the charactes are well developed and make the story cute. Although, I will admit some thing creep me out, especially the doll. Overall, the book was good and I wanted to keep reading to figure out the whole mystery behind the house, doll, and the little dead girl.

[Deena Scintilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Won this from Goodreads.

A nice little mystery for younger teens but not captivating enough to be a cross-over for adults. I will pass it on to a 13 yr. old I know. It also may be appropriate for her precocious 8 yr. old sister.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a bit of adventure, mystery and fantasy in this tale of Hannah's short stay in a haunted house. I just could not settle into where the story was set England or New England and some of the language seemed strained but generally a good story well told.

[Geebowie · Rating 3 out of 5]

the was okay I guess i was excepting more of a horror story instead of a mystery. However it was nice quick little read. I also did not realize it was a sequel to another but i did not have read the other to understand what was going on.