Author: Karen White
Series: Tradd Street (Book 3)
Publication: Berkley; 1st edition (November 1, 2011)
Description: Charleston psychic Melanie Middleton discovers the past isn't finished revealing unsettling secrets in the third novel in the New York Times bestselling Tradd Street series.
With her relationship with writer Jack Treholm as shaky as the foundation of her family home, Melanie’s juggling a number of problems. Like restoring her Tradd Street house...and resisting her mother’s pressure to ‘go public’ with her talent—a sixth sense that unites them to the lost souls of the dead. But Melanie never anticipated her new problem.
Her name is Nola, Jack’s estranged young daughter who appears on their doorstep, damaged, lonely and defiantly immune to her father’s attempts to reconnect. Melanie understands the emotional chasm all too well. As a special, bonding gift Jack’s mother buys Nola an antique dollhouse—a precious tableaux of a perfect Victorian family. Melanie hopes the gift will help thaw Nola’s reserve and draw her into the family she’s never known.
At first, Nola is charmed, and Melanie is delighted—until night falls, and the most unnerving shadows are cast within its miniature rooms. By the time Melanie senses a malevolent presence she fears it may already be too late. A new family has accepted her unwitting invitation to move in—with their own secrets, their own personal demons, and a past that’s drawing Nola into their own inescapable darkness...
My Thoughts: The third Tradd Steet book has a ghostly dollhouse. Melanie is busy restoring her Tradd Steet home. This time it needs a new foundation which means she'll have to move out and live with her mother until the work is done.
When Jack Trenholm comes asking for a favor, Melanie is torn. Her relationship with him is in a confusing state of flux. But when he asks her to take in his newly discovered thirteen-year-old daughter, she can't say no. She remembers how hard it was when she was thirteen and sympathizes with the child. However, Nola hasn't come alone. Besides a backpack and beat up guitar, the ghost of her mother has also made the journey.
Things become more difficult when Jack's parents give Nola a Victorian dollhouse along with ghosts. Research shows that the house is modeled on one in town which is inhabited by an elderly woman who is the last of her family. The woman is a retired music teacher from the school Nola will be attending in the fall. Nola reluctantly agrees to take some music lessons, a sore spot since her mother was a singer-songwriter who recently committed suicide, and Melanie gets involved with the ghosts at that house too.
Nearing forty and not looking forward to it, Melanie soon finds herself dealing with a teenager, a boyfriend with a variety of secrets, and ghosts both benign and malevolent while trying to keep to her schedule.
This was another excellent episode in the Tradd Street series.
Favorite Quote:
I resisted rolling my eyes and tried hard to push aside my impatience, wondering once again why ghosts couldn't just come right out and say what they wanted. My life was like on long B movie, with me as the lone member of the audience shouting at the screen, "Just tell her already!"I bought this one November 25, 2017. You can buy your copy here.
Intriguing!
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