The friendship also reads as real with small arguments happening regularly and the two girls having to repair these small issues. The two of them are quite different from one another, each clearly resulting from their very divergent upbringings. Cotter writes with a confident voice, one that allows each of these girls to be entire unique. Yet somehow Cotter makes it all work and in the end the entire novel makes great sense, enough that readers will want to start again to see the clues they may have missed. Readers will think they have it all figured out and then the story will change. Cotter creates a mystery inside a ghost story that twists and turns delightfully along the way. I seem to be on a roll with Canadian children’s book authors lately, and this is another wonderful Canadian read. Can the two girls figure out who this ghost is and what she wants? So the two girls quickly form a close friendship, made even closer by the frightening ghost that looks just like Rose and who threatens Polly’s life. Rose spends a lot of her days alone, no one at school talks to her, her parents are very busy business people, and the housekeeper ignores her. Rose has always been able to see ghosts, and she hates it since they never leave her alone. But Rose turns out to be a real girl, who just happens to look very ghostlike too. Polly has always wanted to meet a ghost, which is why she thinks that Rose is a ghost the first time she hears her singing in her neighboring attic. That’s how she finds her way into the attic as a safe place away from the bustle of her family. She feels ignored by all of them, though she can’t get away from her twin brothers and their noise. Polly has a huge family with foster siblings too. Set in Toronto in the sixties, this book is about two lonely girls living in homes that attach to one another.

The Swallow: A Ghost Story by Charis Cotter

The swallow a ghost story