Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Twilight Darkness #22 Haunted Dollhouse, #23 The Warning, and #24 Amulet of Doom

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #22, The Haunted Dollhouse, Jessica and her mother have moved into an old house.  An old dollhouse is discovered in the attic and is brought downstairs.  Soon, Jessica notices that the dolls in the dollhouse change position on their own and that the furniture also moves.  After something happens in the dollhouse, it then happens in the original house.  Jessica wants to get rid of the dollhouse, but her mother refuses.

The prologue is quite effective in setting up a spooky atmosphere for the story.

One scene almost caused me to have a panic attack.  It was similar to something very bad that happened in my life last year, and I began to get upset anticipating and fearing the same result. Fortunately, the scene in the book has a happier conclusion, so I was able to calm down and enjoy the rest of the book.

This is an excellent book.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #23, The Warning, Lois loves her boyfriend, Ronnie, and life is good.  Her best friend keeps warning her about her boyfriend, which is annoying.  Lois has no worries until her fingers begin typing hateful messages during typing class. Somebody hates her and wants bad things to happen to her.

Ronnie is an obvious abusive boyfriend.  He is manipulative and calls Lois "honeybunch." Yuck.  He gets angry when Lois does not do what he wants, but Lois is oblivious to his faults. I hate reading books where the protagonist is so clueless.  However, the story does accurately depict how someone like Lois would act while in an abusive relationship.

The boyfriend situation is tied to the warnings that Lois types during her typing class.  The mystery behind who is possessing Lois's hands is quite surprising.  The culprit cannot possibly be guessed until the reveal.

This is a very good book.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #24, The Amulet of Doom, Marilyn's aunt, Zenobia, dies of a heart attack.  After Zenobia's death, her spirit comes to Marilyn, telling her to retrieve Zenobia's amulet from her body and to guard it.  Once the amulet is in Marilyn's possession, she realizes that the amulet contains a dangerous spirit.

While this is a good story, I did not care for it. This set features two books written by Bruce Coville, this book and Spirits and Spells, and both books are centered around magic and fantasy with characters who appear from another world or via time travel.  They don't fit the premise of the rest of the set, and I did not like them very much. They don't mesh well with the other stories, and that's my issue.

No comments: