ARC review; thanks to NetGalley Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, and Del Rey for the access to this ebook. Pub date: Jan 28 2025. 

This book got me at first, I was IN. I liked the vibes and the characters, specifically the two girls, and their powers were very interesting to me. I thought this would be a good haunted house horror story with girls who can see dead people and people's emotions at the core of it. Unfortunately, it lost me and it didn't get me back. 

I 100% agree with people who say that Aunt Clara feels like a female version of Count Olaf. She's a despicable character, but she isn't written in a serious way. She's a murderer, she's vain and cruel, but I never once felt the gravity of how evil she was supposed to be. I was told she was evil, but she spoke and acted like a cartoon villain the entire time. How am I supposed to take her seriously? The ghosts were not scary at all either, though I liked the dynamic they had with the girls. No thrills or scares for me. 

Overall, I was expecting one thing but got something entirely different. It read YA, it was silly instead of dark, and it dragged so much in the middle because a few out-of-pocket things happened and we spent so much time on that for no reason. I was hoping to love this, so I'm incredibly disappointed. 

I would've liked this *so much better* if it was darker. When the ghost haunting started, I thought Aunt Clara was going to be driven slowly insane by them as karmic punishment for the things she did (but she wasn't even scared of them! Even though we're told she was at first, it didn't FEEL LIKE IT cause she didn't ACT LIKE IT. She acted like she was inconvenienced by them more than anything). I thought that she would have more depth and, when she started breaking due to the haunting, we would get more insights from her and maybe some regret or guilt though it would've been too little too late. I thought the girls' powers would be explored further. I thought, I thought, I thought.