The wallpaper almost seemed to come to life, the vines wriggling like snakes. They looked like some kind of barrier, like an enchantment on a sleeping castle that meant no one could approach…In her dreams, a shadow skulked behind the vines. Both there and not there. A phantom of her mind.

Not Quite a Ghost, p. 136

Synopsis

When Violet Hart’s family moves into the old house on Katydid Street, it feels like one too many changes in Violet’s life. She’s just started middle school, and her two best friends suddenly want their friend group to change. And Violet’s new room is a large, dark space in the attic, its walls wrapped in an ugly yellow wallpaper covered with a tangle of creeping vines and giant flowers.

When Violet falls ill, she finds herself spending more and more time up in the attic, staring at the not-pattern of the hideous wallpaper. As the illness refuses to go away, and her parents worriedly search for an explanation, both Violet’s friends and doctors question whether she’s really sick at all. Meanwhile, Violet has begun to feel another presence in the attic room. Like something is hiding behind the wallpaper’s horrible vines.

Review

Anne Ursu never disappoints. Not Quite a Ghost is an empathetic, deeply human examination of undiagnosed illness and medical gaslighting, while also balancing a sweet tale of family love and friendship woes. Violet’s family and friends are drawn very realistically, opposing the surrealism of her haunted attic bedroom. Violet herself is an anxious, deeply caring protagonist whom I loved dearly from the first page.

This book is inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s early feminist story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which I read in an English class a few years back. Ursu’s novel brilliantly captures the creepiness and gothicism of the original story, while keeping the tone friendly to middle grade readers. It’s an incredibly important book, not only in its messages about illness and the medical system, but in its tenderness and empathy towards kids and their lives. This spooky novel is an absolute page-turner that I want to recommend to every reader, young and old.

Also, THE COVER! Done by one of my favorite artists, James Firnhaber, it is both simple and incredibly complex, with a million details from the book and a spooky atmosphere that captures the novel’s mysterious plot.

Be sure to check out Anne Ursu’s feminist high fantasy/mystery novel The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, and the interview I was honored to have with her in 2022, in which she offered a sneak peek at the process behind Not Quite a Ghost.