Frost

July 25, 2011
Two private-school seniors are forced to become roommates in Baer's YA debut, which is chilly in more ways than one. Leena is a pill-popping, college-focused, peer counselor who dislikes arty, erratic Celeste. Leena's plan to room with her best friends in the tiny dorm, Frost House, is spoiled when one friend goes abroad, and Celeste is placed in the first-floor spot with Leena because of a broken leg. Celeste's gorgeous brother David is some compensation, but the "drama" that has always trailed Celeste continues. Weird noises, errant breezes, and a closet that Celeste abhors and Leena finds strangely attractive are the starting point, but it's not long before events spiral out of control. It's meant to be horrifying, but although Baer is a competent writer, the problem is lack of feeling. Leena is more interested in explaining (and numbing) her emotions than in experiencing them, and because it's a first-person narrative, visceral characters like Celeste get little stage time. The haunted "history" of Frost House is hinted at with little detail, and the ending wraps up the plot with an unsatisfying third-hand report. Ages 12âup.

August 15, 2011

Boarding school turns from magical to deadly in this debut.

After discovering Frost House, the shabby-chic Victorian hidden on the edge of campus, and convincing the dean to let her and her best friends room in it, Leena returns to start senior year of Barcroft (a quintessential New England prep school) with an unexpected roommate, eccentric Celeste. When not photographing dead beetles, Celeste tries to cover up unexplained events at Frost, from a closet that smells like death to bruises all over her body. Instead of the idyllic year Leena planned, she begins hiding out in her own closet when she sinks into anxiety and experiences her own strange occurrences. After Leena dates Celeste's older brother, David, who took a year off to care for their father, who suffers from schizoaffective disorder, the roommates, both vying for David's attention, initiate cat-and-mouse games. It's up to readers to figure out who—or what—is causing all the mental instability in Frost House among the plot twists and turns. Baer has a knack for dialogue and creating creepy situations that will intrigue teens. But because the story line is rather repetitive and drawn out, the surprise ending makes more of a whimper than a bang.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 1, 2011

Gr 8 Up-This suspenseful modern gothic revolves around a haunting presence in Frost House, a Victorian-era single-family house on the campus of Barcroft, a boarding school that has become a surrogate home for Leena Thomas. She is so taken with the place that she begs the Dean of Students to allow her and her friends to share it senior year. However, when campus oddball Celeste breaks her leg, she becomes Leena's not entirely welcome roommate, and problems soon abound. Creepy events start to happen in their room-but only to Celeste, whose family history of mental illness makes Leena wonder whether the drama is a ploy for attention or even an outright breakdown. The same bizarre presence that seems to want to cast out Celeste embraces Leena, luring her to nest in a closet, where she can communicate with her childhood security object, a hollow owl named Cubby in which she stores a variety of pilfered prescription drugs. Even as Leena begins to date Celeste's brother, she turns more and more to the closet and to the drugs to compensate for alienating her dearest friends in the conflict that ensues when Celeste no longer believes that her housemates are tormenting her but that the house itself wants her gone. When cocooned in the closet rumored to have been a sort of cell for the woman who lived there many years before, Leena doesn't need college interviews or boyfriends-just the house. She could stay there forever. That's what it wants. Readers may want a touch more cohesion for the narrative, maybe another layer or two for some characters, but many will gladly turn the pages to soak up its eerie atmosphere.-Suzanne Gordon, Lanier High School, Sugar Hill, GA

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2011
Grades 8-11 Leena, a shining star at a prestigious boarding school, leverages a connection with the dean to use a quaint Victorian campus house as a dorm for herself and close friends, where they plan to have the best senior year ever. But a last-minute room switch places Leena with dramatic, emotional outsider Celeste. Strange things start happening, and while Leena is pulled deeper into Frost House's eerie comfort, Celeste is repelled by it, suffering odd bruises and burns and being haunted by the feeling that she is unwanted and unwelcome. As the weeks progress, Leena begins to fall apart, losing her position as a peer counselor, blowing off college interviews, and opening herself up to Celeste's brother David's friendly and romantic advancesdespite intuitively fearing him. A lot is going on in this multilayered first novel, much of it beneath the surface, which leaves the reader appropriately on edge. Those anticipating a full-blown haunting may be disappointed, but this nuanced blend of psychological suspense and boarding-school drama will tingle the spines of plenty of readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)