The Last Resort
Erin Estrada Kelly
Scholastic

It’s the start of the summer break. Lila Clement goes into one of her panics when she’s told she and her brother, Caleb, have to accompany her parents on a long drive to Ohio for a fortnight’s stay for her paternal grandfather’s funeral. She’s never even met this grandfather, so why bother. They’ll stay for a while in the creepy old Victorian Castle Hill Inn that Grandpa Clement owned. Moreover her two best friends seem to have become rather distant and she’d far rather remain in her home town and try to work things out. Instead it’s her grandfather’s affairs that have to be sorted out. He was an eccentric by all accounts.

Her grandfather’s neighbour is Teddy who was close to him and when she’s sure she’s seen Grandpa Clement’s ghost who said he was murdered and in need of her help. Lila tells the boy. He in turn reveals that on the fourth floor of Castle Hill Inn is a portal through which spirits of the dead pass to the afterlife. Lila, Teddy and Caleb are determined to solve the mystery of Grandpa’s murder; in so doing they find themselves involved with victims of a tragedy from over a century and a half ago.

A book with some really creepy scenes with ghosts after revenge as well as malevolent forces that prey on the children’s fear. Older readers will be gripped by this pacy spectral story.