The Invited

February 1, 2019
A city couple trades their fast-paced lifestyle for rural Vermont, running headlong into a few ghosts along the way.When her father dies, Helen convinces her husband, Nate, that they should quit their jobs and move to the country to live simpler, more self-sustaining lives. So they buy a plot of land outside a small town and begin building their dream house. Despite the unfriendly reactions of suspicious townspeople, Helen feel like she's found a true home--but someone else already calls this land home. Nearly a century before, Hattie Breckenridge was hanged here for practicing witchcraft; her daughter, Jane, disappeared the same day and was never seen again. When Helen starts finding artifacts that all have some connection to the Breckenridge family, she also, not coincidentally, begins to see their ghosts. Meanwhile, Nate spends more and more time chasing an elusive white deer. As Helen bonds with Olive, a local teenager who has lost her mother, and learns more and more of the Breckenridge history, she realizes that the ghosts are there with a message, though perhaps they want something even more. The setup is familiar--secretive small-town residents with their own painful history resent the influence of outsiders--and the early part of the novel lays the foundation for a successful ghost story. Hattie has good reason to want revenge on the town, and maybe Helen will be her conduit. As McMahon's (Burntown, 2017, etc.) novel develops, though, the haunting atmosphere dissipates. The ghosts hardly constitute a presence once Olive's story becomes the driving force for the plot. Of course the ghosts are merely window dressing in the end; it's us humans who are really scary. (Who knew?)Too much wide-eyed sentimentality; not enough creepy malevolence.

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March 1, 2019

Helen and Nate Wetherell attempt to escape their dull lives by moving to a village in Vermont, where they will build their dream home. It's even more alluring that the adjacent bog holds stories of hauntings. Helen, a historian, collects artifacts from the town's past and builds them into the house--a beam hewn from the tree used to hang Hattie Breckenridge for witchcraft in 1924, blackened bricks from a deadly fire, a carved maple mantel. She soon realizes the objects "remember" and reveal secrets of the Breckenridge family. Young neighbor Olive Kissner and her mother knew they could find Hattie's treasure, hidden in the bog 100 years earlier. When her mother leaves town mysteriously, Olive continues the search alone. Since Helen and Nate now own the bog, she decides to scare them away and quickly discovers that her own family's secrets are strangely connected to Hattie. Will Helen's home be the in-between meeting place for the dead and the living? And will Olive uncover the treasure and the key to her mother's disappearance? VERDICT The latest from McMahon (Burntown) is like a nesting doll--a thriller inside a murder mystery inside a ghost story--and will chill readers with every sideways glimpse of a passing shadow.--K.L. Romo, Duncanville, TX

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2019
Helen and Nate Wetherall are building their dream house in Hartsboro, Vermont, on property complete with a bog (to ignite Nate's naturalist curiosity) and the ruins of an ancient house (to give Helen the connection with history she craves). When Helen digs into Hartsboro's history, she finds a dark story. In 1924, local witch Hattie Breckenridge was lynched in the Wetheralls' bog. As the dream house takes shape, Hattie's ghost appears, urging Helen to look into the fate of Hattie's daughter, Jane. Lured into the mystery, Helen discovers violent deaths in each generation of Hattie's female descendants. One by one, Helen collects pieces of the buildings where they died, determined to bring Hattie's girls together in the new house. Olive, a local teen, is drawn to the bog to search for the treasure Hattie is said to have hidden there. Olive and her mother dreamed of finding the treasure together, and it's Olive's last connection to her mother, who abandoned Olive and her father without a word. But Nate and Helen's arrival threatens to banish that connection, prompting Olive to dive into a dangerous investigation of her mother's final days in Hartsboro. McMahon's siren-like ghosts use Helen to build their own home to haunt, and the resulting blend of ghost story and modern mystery is flawlessly compelling and evocative. A masterful twist on the haunted-house story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)