The Haunting of Sunshine Girl by Paige McKenzie

Amazon Synopsis: In that place where you're more asleep than awake any more, I hear something else. A phrase uttered in a child's voice, no more than a whisper: Night Night.
Something freaky's going on with Sunshine's new house . . . there's the chill that wraps itself around her bones, the giggling she can hear in the dead of night, and then the strange shadows that lurk in her photographs. But the more weird stuff that happens, the less her mum believes her. Sunshine's always had a quirky affiliation with the past, but this time, history is getting much too close for comfort . . .
If there is something, or someone, haunting her house, what do they want? And what will they do if Sunshine can't help them?
As things become more frightening and dangerous, and the giggles she hears turn to sobs and screams, Sunshine has no choice but to accept what she is, face the test before her and save her mother from a fate worse than death.

So for some reason I was really in the mood for something a little creepy this month. I think it was one of the topics we were looking at in University that just made me want some 'campfire ghost story' in my life. Logically I went straight for this because I only got it a few weeks before.

In this book we are in the perspective of Sunshine, a girl who has just moved from sunny Texas to a rainy little town for her mothers work. As soon as she gets to her new house though it is clear something is not right. Along with the pressure of not weirding out her new friend, Nolan, and dealing with her mothers increasingly odd behavior as well as a creepy art teacher, Sunshine soon finds herself out of her depth. She may be the only one who can fix any of it though. 

So this book definitely gave me what I wanted. The writing style is the kind that gave you a feeling of something being behind you constantly. It reminded me of a classic ghost story in the way that it played on your own familiarities to make you scared. At some points it was quite obvious with the foreshadowing and later in the book became more paranormal than ghost story, which was a bit disappointing for me. That was only because of how much I was craving something more old school. The way it used children and mystery though really made me get goosebumps. I find children creepy anyway so any horror that has them is a sure win for me because it always creeps me out. 

This one played on the emotions as well though and soon it was not clear who was a villain and who was the hero. For most of it I was in the exact same boat as Sunshine and had no idea what was meant to be done. It meant that I was on edge for a while whilst reading this book.

It took me quite a while to get through this book. The first half was one of those situations where you can read for hours but only feel like you have read ten pages. Once I got to the half way mark though I shot through this book. I found it very cinematic in that were it to be adapted beyond the YouTube series it would be incredibly easy to create a film true to the books. Maybe that is just my film maker mind talking though.

By the end of this book I was in knots with tension. That was fantastic. After finishing I realised just how invested I had become throughout the book. I will never trust my bath again. My reactions were a little like;


I was not expecting to like it as much as I did and truthfully was only using it to scratch an itch. Now I cannot wait for the second book and to delve deeper into this world that Sunshine lives in. Hopefully I will get some of the chills I got with this one back for round two.


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