Customer Reviews

The Ghost in the Third Row

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The Ghost in the Third Row is a great book for kids 9-12 years of age. It has suspense,mystery,and curiousity. Which is great for kids who L-O-V-E mysteries and thrillers!

The Ghost in the Third Row was my true and faithful favorite from about 1st to 5th grade. I still pull it out and read it every so often. The characters are great; Chris and Nina, as well as the supporting cast, are real, funny and impossible to not fall in love with. Combining the theatre, ghosts, and mystery, it's just an all-round entertaining and quality read.

"The Ghost in the Third Row" is the first of three books that deal with two girls and their run-ins with various ghosts. The second and third books are The Ghost Wore Gray and The Ghost in the Big Brass Bed, but the first installment was the only one that I hadn't read as a child. Perhaps because of that reason (what with the lack of nostalgia that came with revisiting the others), I found it less enjoyable than its sequels. Not bad, just a little bland.

Nina Tanleven and Chris Gurney have both auditioned and won parts in the upcoming theatre production of "The Woman in White," only to find that rehearsals are fraught with difficulties. Costumes are sabotaged, possessions are stolen, and there are sightings of a ghostly woman sitting in the third row. The play itself is based on a true story about a singer who was killed by a jealous suitor, and now the cast believes that she's haunting the theatre.

But Chris and Nina have a different theory. Having seen the ghost for themselves and considering her quite friendly, they believe that she's trying to point them towards a human culprit behind all the disruption. There are plenty of suspects to choose from: the leading lady Lydia Crane, director Edgar Lonis, writer Alan Bland, producer Gwendolyn Meyer, and plenty more cast and crew. If anything, there are perhaps a few too many suspects - I've only named a few, and altogether there are quite a lot to keep track of in such a slender volume.

Nina and Chris's investigation is filled with plenty of scares and mini-mysteries, though it's not Bruce Coville's best offering for young readers. Often chapters end on cliff-hangers that are resolved in the following chapters through the perspective of hindsight, and many of the characters are little more than names, making it difficult to consider them viable suspects in the mystery. How Nina ultimately solves the mystery is a bit of a stretch (a brief comment reminds her of an incident that not only occurred several weeks ago, but which Nina wasn't even involved with) and there's a rather irritating portrayal of female relationships. Although Nina and Chris have a strong bond, there is the inevitable (and clichéd) presence of the catty young co-star, as well as a female stage manager that Nina hates on sight because: "she was beautiful and I didn't care to have anyone that pretty sitting next to Edgar."

Still, Nina's first-person narration is breezy and fun, and her warm relationship with her father is high-point. Though this is a somewhat weak beginning to the trilogy, the following books more than make up for it.

Many popular children's books are ridiculous if you go back and read them again as an adult. See, e.g., The Babysitter's Club series - I'm still slightly mortified that I wasted so much time on them. This book (and the others in the series) is different - the story is solid, and the writing is fresh and intelligent. I first read & loved this book when I was in 4th grade - nearly 20 years ago. I picked it up again earlier this year (I'm 29!) and loved it just as much. What makes the difference between this & other books is that Mr. Coville assumes his readers are intelligent - he doesn't write as though he's writing to children, he writes as though he's writing to people.

If my guess is correct I've been in the theater this book takes place i

The product was received in a timely manner. I would order again from the seller.

If you love mysteries, suspense, a shiver running down your back and the hair on the back of your neck rising, you will love this book. I personally loved it. Bruce Coville has so many details in his books, that it is imposible to read this book without seeing mysterious things yourself. The book is definetly worth your money!

I didn`t liked this book because this book wasn`t scary as I thought. For an example,
"Isn`t this obvious? she said. I saw the ghost too!" and the place where it said,
"I could see through the ghost" I thought Bruce Coville(the author) wanted to make these sentences scary but it wasn`t so it was kind of boring. But I liked it that Lydia was pretending to a ghost bacause I never read a book that a person pretends to a ghost.