What the Dead Want is Norah Olson's second novel; it is the first novel by Olson that I've read. It's a rather fast paced novel in that the whole story takes place over just a couple or three days. This is also a young adult novel. I don't read a lot of YA, and even though there are quite a few YA titles in the library that pique my interest, I usually don't ever get around to reading them. Gretchen travels on short notice out to the boonies of upstate New York to spend the summer helping a great-aunt she never knew she had clean out her family's ancestral mansion. When phrased like this, this seems an extremely ill-advised decision that Gretchen, a teenager, makes. And her de facto guardian, Janine, just lets her make it even though Janine is so "level headed" and calm. When Gretchen arrives, she finds the mansion isolated, dark, and in disrepair; the aunt, Esther, is eccentric and evasive; and cell phone reception is spotty and unreliable....
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