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Berni

Skip Nancy Drew and read this instead!

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2021

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If you ever loved Nancy Drew (the books, not the terrible CW TV version) or Scooby-Doo, you should check out The Agony House. Denise's folks, her mom and step-dad, have moved her back to New Orleans right before her senior year of high school. That's always painful. She had solid friends in Houston and was sure of a full scholarship to a university there.

Now she's in NOLA in a horribly run down Victorian which her parents are fixing up to turn it into a bed and breakfast. There is a lot of work to be done - it's been empty and neglected for some time and Hurricane Katrina didn't help it. It looked like the previous owner had started to fix it up and then left it abandoned.

Not everyone has what it takes to live in a haunted house. Everyone starts having accidents. Mike, the step-dad falls through the porch - stuff like that, scary and expensive both. Here's where I have to say growing up as a traditional Catholic gives me an edge on such matters. As soon as I realized it was haunted, I would have gone to the diocesan office to find out where the local exorcist was located and engage his services. (St. Pope John Paul II had asked all dioceses to have an exorcist. I know who the one for my diocese is.) But they're not Catholic so they don't go that route.

Denise and Terry, the neighborhood ghost enthusiast, try to figure out who is doing the haunting and why. They find in the attic an old comic, lovingly wrapped in plastic, which seems to provide some clues. After all, there is a sketch of Denise's house in it, a sketch of when the house was in its prime.

This is targeted at teens. As a much older reader, I quickly figured out what was going on with the haunting, but I sure enjoyed the trip Priest took us on getting there. This is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it for anyone who likes a good ghost story, mystery, or both.

MeMom

this was a gift

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2021

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My 12 year old granddaughter requested this book. She told me it is a good story.

Amazon Customer

AMAZING❤️

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2020

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THIS BOOK IS EVERYTHING.
From page one, I got hooked. Amazing pictures, great storyline, amazing ending. Package came in GREAT condition, no scratches, PERFECT. One of my favorite books

Jett

Read this book in the dark of night

Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2019

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Cherie Priest hits it out of the paranormal park again. With quiet sort of creepiness that end in you finishing the book in wee hours, she hooks with strong believable characters and a seemingly normal situation. Come for the BOO factor, but stay for the great storytelling.

Amazon Customer

Written by Cherie Priest! Enough said...

Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2018

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I loved the characters and the awkward situation Ms Priest put the main family in. This house project was sort of do-or-die, but everyone kept their heads up and dealt with ...haunting, ghosts, comic book?!? Great fun and action throughout!

DebbieP

Great book for adults too.

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2020

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Really enjoyed this book. Great quarantine reading! Totally absorbed in it. Thanks.

S. Johnson

Truly excellent.

Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2019

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I have never read a story by Cherie Priest that I did not enjoy. This is wonderful.

GACS - HSlibrary

good teen mystery

Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2019

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It's a great mystery with a tough of the graphic novel on the side.

Mallory

Fantastic Story

Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2018

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I loved this ghost story so much! Great characters and a great story.

Laurel Perkins

Fun Read

Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2023

Hard to put down! The story was exciting and different. A book about a mysterious comic book, graphic novel included. The new girl in town moves into a scary, run down, big old house with her Mom and Step Dad. Detecting work ensues! Another winner from one of my favorite authors.

Robert W. Tienken

Excellent Book

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2018

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Very spooky book with excellent atmosphere.

Amazon Customer

Good read

Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2022

This was a good read, nice ghost story to start off the year. Would definitely recommend someone go read this beauty .

Well done horror/ghost story

Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2019

I have read a number of books by Priest and they are always interesting reads even though I am not a huge fan of her writing style. When I saw this book was a blend of traditional novel and graphic novel I had to pick it up because I love that sort of thing. This ended up being a decent read involving a haunted house, ghosts, and a teen trying to fit into a new neighborhood.

Denise and her family have just moved back to New Orleans and purchased a huge decrepit house that Denise’s mom wants to turn into a B&B. Unfortunately money is tight and things keep going wrong, it’s almost like the house is out to kill them. Then when Denise and her family start hearing and seeing strange things it really gets out of control. Denise wonders if everything that is happening ties into a mysterious graphic novel that she found in the attic of the house.

This is a well done ghost mystery sort of story. I enjoyed the setting of a New Orleans that is trying to recover from the aftermath of Katrina. I also liked Denise and the other teens she meets in New Orleans. The story is a well done mystery and I enjoyed the role the graphic novel played in it.

The book alternates between novel portions and graphic novel parts. The graphic novel parts are much less frequent and are directly from the mysterious graphic novel Denise and her friends find. While there isn’t anything super creative here, this was a fun and creepy diversion. For some reason it reminded me a bit of Chris Wooding’s “Malice” although the mystery was quite a bit different.

Overall this was a good read. It’s a creepy haunted house story in an interesting setting. The mystery and the characters were engaging and well done. I would recommend to those who enjoy novel/graphic novel hybrids and like ghost stories.

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

A good ghost story

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2019

In the summer before her senior year of high school, Denise's life is turned upside down when her mother, Sally, and new stepdad, Mike, buy an abandoned house in New Orleans, planning to fix it up into a bed-and-breakfast. For Sally and Denise, this is a move back; they were displaced to Houston after Katrina took Denise's father and grandmother.

After a few days of working on the mold and mildew (and more substantial damage, and preparing to bring the house up to code...), she gets to know future classmates Norman, a young entrepreneur who is working multiple jobs in the summer, and Terry, an ambitious ghost-hunter who records strange voices on his portable recorder in the "Agony House", so-called by Denise because it's on Argonne Street, and, well...

A series of strange accidents begin to happen around the house. And in the hard-to-get-to attic, Denise and Terry find the manuscript for a comic book from before the Comics Code. The name on the comic belongs to a writer-artist who died mysteriously in the 1950s in a house in New Orleans. It's a weird comic, and a weird thing to find, but does it hold clues to what's happening on Argonne Street? (Aw, you guessed!)

The story is scary, but not _too_ scary; this is a YA novel from Scholastic (via their Arthur A. Levine line). But it pulls no punches, and the danger becomes quite real: _something_ wants them out of the house.

Denise and her new friends race to solve the puzzle before someone gets killed. If, indeed, someone hasn't already been.

Quite aside from the story and the engaging characters, this book thrives on setting. Priest has always been good at setting, but the depiction of a slowly-recovering neighborhood in New Orleans takes things to a new level.

Paige G.

a cute mystery

Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2018

Disclaimer: I received this book through KidLitExchange and the publishing company. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Rating: 3/5

Publication Date: September 25, 2018

Genre: MG Mystery

Recommended Age: 12+ (mystery, some spooky moments)

Publisher: Scholastic

Pages: 272

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Synopsis: Denise Farber has just moved back to New Orleans with her mom and step-dad. They left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and have finally returned, wagering the last of their family's money on fixing up an old, rundown house and converting it to a bed and breakfast.Nothing seems to work around the place, which doesn't seem too weird to Denise. The unexplained noises are a little more out of the ordinary, but again, nothing too unusual. But when floors collapse, deadly objects rain down, and she hears creepy voices, it's clear to Denise that something more sinister lurks hidden here.Answers may lie in an old comic book Denise finds concealed in the attic: the lost, final project of a famous artist who disappeared in the 1950s. Denise isn't budging from her new home, so she must unravel the mystery-on the pages and off-if she and her family are to survive...

Review: For the most part this book was cute and enjoyable. The book had a good mystery in it and the characters are fairly well developed. The story is engaging as well and it would be a cute mystery for younger readers.

However, I didn’t like how the book brought up the topic of white people coming in to “white up” the neighborhood but didn’t go anywhere with it. It seemed like the book could have done better on some of the more social conscious issues but it failed to push those. Instead the book pushed random/unimportant aspects to the point where I felt that it was just trying to fill the book.

Verdict: A cute mystery.