by Jacqueline West
ages: 9+
First sentence: “Everyone who lived in the big stone house on Linden Street eventually went insane.”
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Others in the series: The Shadows

As a result of events in the first book, Olive is no longer able to get into the paintings — the doorway to Elsewhere — on her own. She needs the help of the cats — Horatio, Harvey and Leopold — to get in and out. And, increasingly, they are unwilling to help her. That, and her friend Morton is getting more and more cantankerous because Olive can’t find a solution to get him out of the painting for good.

Then a boy moves in two doors down, and starts asking questions he shouldn’t (or, rather, Olive doesn’t want to answer), but he puts an idea in her mind: if she can find the grimorie (book of spells), then maybe she can figure out not only how to get to Elsewhere by herself, but maybe she can figure out how to get Morton out.

Except, things don’t go the way Olive wants them to.

The best thing about this one is that it’s delightfully creepy. There’s a point when you, as the reader, know something bad HAS to happen, and yet West drags it out, bit by bit (but not in a painful way), stringing us along just enough for us to sit at the edge of our seats, wondering when the resolution will come.

And come it does.  (It’s quite satisfying, too.)

While it’s a continuation of the previous book, it’s also a stand-alone story of its own. You don’t really need to have read the first one to enjoy this one, and there really isn’t any threads left undone (well… not entirely true, but the undone thread isn’t entirely relevant to the story). And that truly makes this a winner of a series.