Twelve-year-old Lila wants to win back her friends and stop being so dramatic. Then her estranged Grandpa Clem dies, forcing her family to spend the summer at his Victorian inn in Ohio. After a strange car accident on the way there, Lila starts seeing people in old-fashioned clothes that nobody else notices. At the funeral, she spots an impossible figure in her grandfather's favorite chair. It's Grandpa Clem himself. He tells Lila he was murdered by someone who wants to control the inn. The building isn't an ordinary bed and breakfast. It's a portal between the living world and the realm of the dead, a waystation for ghosts traveling to the afterlife. Now Lila must work with her skeptical brother Caleb and their ghost-obsessed neighbor Teddy to find her grandfather's killer. She also has to stop evil spirits from breaking through into the human world. The girl who promised to be less dramatic faces the most dramatic situation of her life.
Genres: mystery, fantasy, supernatural, young-adult, ghost-stories, paranormal
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-friends, family-drama, fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Ohio, Victorian Inn
Period: Present Day
Paperback