Customer Reviews

Haunting

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Joan Lowery Nixon is a striking writer. I would read this book over and over again. She shows an evil mood, when she describes the mysterious evil that haunts the old plantation house. Nixon's style is mysterious murders, ghosts, and other things that go bump in the night.

I would recommend this book to people who love a good spine-chilling, horrifying, spooky tale. The exposition could use a little work but otherwise the book is breath-taking.This book gave me the jitters, but a chill that fills my mind with questions. What if ghost do exist? What if they're watching you right now? What if they're standing right behind you?

The main character in the story is Lia Langley who looks back on her families' past and feels she doesn't fit in. All the women in her family have been exceptionally brave except for her. Lia loves to read and doesn't solcialize well with others. Lia is shy and very unsure of herself. After the death of Lia's great-grandmother, Sarah, an old plantation house named Graymoss is left in Lia's mother's hands. Lia's parents plan to move there and raise unadoptable children.

According to a mysterious lady that lives in the wood behind Graymoss, Lia will have to set free the evil that haunts Graymoss after dusk for the house to be "liveable." Will Lia save Graymoss? Will the evil be vanquished? Who is the inscrutable evil that haunts Graymoss?

The plot is very easy to follow. It's clear that Lia's goal us to get rid of the the ghost that haunt Graymoss. The plot revolves around the stories of Graymoss and the mystifying things that happen after dark.

In summary, Joan Lowery Nixon knows how to write a good book from expostion to the closing sentence. If I had to rate this book from 1 to 10, without a doubt I would this book a 10.

This book is about a girl, Lia Starling. When her great-grandmother dies her mother inheirits this old plantation called, Graymaoss. This plantation survived the Civil War and is waiting for some one. When Lia's parents want to move into the house and fill it with "unadoptabe" kids Lia has to figure out who the house is waiting for using the original owner, Charolette Blevins, diary and an old copy of Favorite Tales of Edgar Allen Poe. Can she solve this mystery? You'll have to read it to find out. This book sent chills down my spine and its a great book to read over and over again. The auther describes everything so well that it feels like you're excperiencing the terror of Graymoss!

THE HAUNTING is an awesome book. I usually like Joan Lowery Nixon's work, anyway...so of course I'd think this is a great book. This book is about a modern-day teenager named Lia who doesn't believe she is very brave and courageous like most of the women in her family have been. She, of course, loves to read and doesn't have a lot of friends. After Lia's great-grandmother dies, her parents are given the huge house on a plantation her great-grandmother owned. Lia's parents decide to move there and adopt lots of orphan children, who will become Lia's brothers and sisters. Lia doesn't want to have any brothers and sisters because she likes being the only child, and so she doesn't want to move to the plantation. Anyway, while Lia's great-grandmother was dying in the hospital, Lia came over to visit her great-grandmother. Her great-grandmother thought Lia was Lia's mother, and told her to read a diary by a girl named Charlotte who's grandfather owned the plantation house during the Civil War, in the 1800s and why she thinks the house is haunted. When Lia tells her mother this, her mother doesn't believe the house is haunted and wants to live in it anyway (even Lia's grandmother believes the house is haunted). So to prove the house is haunted, Lia finds Charlotte's diary and reads it and now has to discover a way to destroy the evil in the house before it destroys her! A great thriller for a late-night reading. Go out and try this book.

I think The Haunting is a wonderful book.The book is about a girl named Lia,whose family gets a plantion called,Graysmoss.They get Graysmoss,because Lia's great grandma had passed it down to them when she died.When they went to visit Graysmoss they find out that it's haunted.Lia's mom and dad wanted to fill the house with unadopted kids.Lia trys to get her mom and dad to stay until dark.She wants to do that because she wants to know what's haunting the house.She also doesn't want any little brothers and sisters. When Lia goes to her grandma's house she said she was going to go to a party. Instead,she goes to Graysmoss.Does she find out what's causing the evil?You have to read the book to find out. I think the best part of the book was that you had to guess why the evil was happening.I didn't like the book because it was too short.I think any young adult who likes a scare now and then would enjoy this book.

I thought this book was really good. I espescially liked the way Joan Lowry Nixon based the book on Civil War times. I think this added to the spooky atmosphere of the story. However, I didn't really like how the whole book mostly involves scenes in which people try to warn them away from the house. I think that could be summed up more quickly. In my opinion, the book would have been better if the'd actually moved into the house in the story. But all in all, I liked the story a lot and I'm sure I'll read it over and over again. It's great for mystery lovers who love being scared!

The Haunting by Joan lowery Nixon is an awesome book. Anyone who enjoys Edger Allen Poe stories is sure to like this story. A young girl named Anne is about to move into the Graymoss mansion when she discovers it's terrifing secret. She reads the diary of a girl who lived at Graymoss during the Civil War and about the ghosts in the house. A good book for teens and adults The Haunting provides chills for all who read it.

Very scary...Once you pick it up you won't want to put it down...Good enough to read more than 1 time...Joan is a great author and shows great creativity with this book...I give it 5 stars all the way..

I read Joan Nixon's "The Haunting" for my English Class. It was an okay book, but way too creepy. She used way too much dark imagery and all the supernatural stuff was just weird. I like mystery stories, but this was just over the top. I also decided tor ead it at night. Not a good idea. I did not sleep very well that night.
I don't want to be to critical, but it was also very boring and hard to follow. I couldn't keep up witha anything going on in the book. especially towards the end. To me that's when it got really complicated. It was also kind of sad at both the beginning and end. It isa sad in the beginning when the great grandmother dies. I won't spoil the ending for anyone who hasn't read the book, but let's just say someone dies and it's very sad.
Overall I did not like the darkness, boringness, or overall creepiness of this book. I would not recomend it.

Joan Lowry Nixon crafts a competent ghost story with a likeable heroine, but the plot could use a little less mystery and a little more ghostly interference. But fans of haunted houses and mysterious family secrets will enjoy this a great deal.

Lia is an unspectacular member of a family known for its impressive women. When her great-grandmother dies, she tells Lia that their ancestral house, Graymoss, must be preserved -- even though it is thought to be hideously evil. However, Lia's blindly optimistic parents have an obsessive dream of adopting a dozen "unadoptable" children, and are determined to turn Graymoss into a home for those kids. Lia is less than thrilled about the idea, both because of the disruption of her life and because of the ghosts.

Before leaving, Lia purchases a bag of voodoo gris-gris that will repel ghosts. And soon she finds that she needs it -- strange gusts of wind, a crashing window, a falling book, and a strange indentation in her bed. Her parents refuse to believe that there is anything strange about the house, but Lia can feel a malevolent presence. Armed with gris-gris, a cryptic diary and a collection of Poe's stories, she must try to banish the evil forces from Graymoss.

Nixon crafts a good story with plenty of sprinkled clues, family conflicts, and a big creaky house with no bathrooms. Her dialogue is pleasantly solid and believable, without fake witticisms or overly complex monologues. It's easy to imagine real people saying these words. Her portrayals of the family and their differing views on Graymoss were exceptionally done. And the mystery clues sprinkled in the Poe book and the old diary from a Civil War Southern belle were also clever and pulled the various threads of the story together.

Unfortunately, this book is not particularly scary. The ghostly interludes are few and far between, and even when they do surface, they are not particularly detailed or frightening -- Nixon seems to be stuck on plaster faces that move and gusts of wind, because the "boo!" effects never progress beyond that. She also inserts a lukewarm love interest and a subplot about the unadoptable kids. While these are good in themselves, they seem rather pointless as nothing is really done with them.

Lia is a likeable heroine; she's really accomplished nothing noteworthy, but doesn't allow that fact to get her down. She also shows extraordinary patience with her dewy-eyed parents, who for all their talk about "reality" seem to have very little grasp on it. Their reckless plans to adopt "unadoptable" kids (who are often unadoptable for very good reasons) will have many readers rolling their eyes. Her grandmother exhibits a different kind of irritating stubbornness, but one that readers will warm to much more readily.

Despite the drawbacks, this is a pretty solid historical mystery -- but the realm of the juvenile horror story is still John Bellairs's. If you like family secrets and a few "boo!" moments, this might be your speed.

A review by Jessie
Lia is a 15-year-old girl who only wants to fit in with all the women in her family. She is the only woman who hasn't yet done anything worth honoring. Her mother and father have a big dream of adopting many children who do not have a home. At the start of this story Lia and her parent do not see eye to eye on this. But through the story she matures and sees how much the lonely children need to be apart of her family. The only thing that is holding them back is Graymoss. Graymoss is a plantation with a beautiful house and many acres. Lia's Great Grandmother left this house to Lia's mother, when she died. There is only one problem with the house. In the daytime the house is wonderful, but after the sun goes down and darkness sneaks up strange, unexplainable things start to happen. The ceiling turns into shrieking, terrifying faces and the walls whisper something. Graymoss has been in the family for a long time. The last person to sleep a whole peaceful night in it was Charlotte Blevins, an ancestor of Lia's family. The only clues Lia has to set the evil inside the house free is Charlotte Blevins's diary and an old copy of Favorite Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, both of these play a large part in unlocking the secrets left behind in Graymoss.

This story always kept me at the edge of my seat. I could not put it down once I started reading. I enjoyed all of the characters in the story every much. My favorite was the main character Lia, because she was very believable and made you feel like you were apart of the book. Like the way the author always told her thoughts made me feel like I was right next to her. On example of this is when Lia is in the car with her parents and is thinking about their dream. She was very angry because she thought that the other children would replace her. Another example of the author telling everything that Lia was thinking in her mind was when she was at Graymoss after dark. "Leave this horrible place! a voice in my head kept saying. Get out of here! Run!" The language the author used in this book was very easy to follow. The story was told in the way that every age could enjoy reading it. The author gave great details to enhance the story. An example of this is when Lia and Jonathan are in Graymoss and it turned dark. "The wind pushed against me. The whispers turned to shouts, and invisible fingers pulled through my hair and along my face." The details make you feel like you are right there next to Lia. I thought the length of the story was perfect. The author covered everything.

I recommend this book to any one who enjoys suspenseful, spooky stories. I do not recommend this book to any one who gets nightmares easily or does not like thrilling surprises. The Haunting was a great book.