The Ghost Tree by Christina Henry

The Ghost Tree book summary:

The Ghost Tree is a horror book by Christina Henry. This book takes place in Smith’s Hollow. This town is small and everyone knows everyone or they at least know about that person. This is a safe town where nothing really major happens other than small petty things. When people start to go missing the only person who ever has a clue as to what’s going on is a teenager who had a terrifying vision. After two girls are found in the woods torn apart, Lauren is shocked but doesn’t really expect the police to find out what happened. This is mostly due to them giving up on finding out what happened to her father the year before. When Lauren has a vision of a monster dragging those girls through the woods she has to do something. She can’t just let something else bad happen again like the rest of her town is doing.

What I thought about The Ghost Tree:

The Ghost Tree is a horror novel that mostly follows Lauren. But we also get the point of view of Miranda, Mrs. Schneider, Karen, Sofia Lopez, Richard Touhy III, and Alejandrom (Alex) Lopez. I think there are a few more points of view but I forgot to write them down and we honestly didn’t get their point of view very much.

Characters:

As I started The Ghost Tree mostly follows Lauren. Lauren is such a great character and yet kind of stupid. That’s to be expected with a young girl though. They are expected to be dumb and think they really can’t be hurt which is why it doesn’t really bother me very much. She has a lot of growth in the story from not really knowing who she is and not really wanting to grow up like her friend Miranda is. I don’t know if it’s just me but Lauren is oddly perceptive for a girl her age. I don’t remember EVER being this perceptive at this age. To be honest at this age I was more self-absorbed than anything. I’m sure there are kids out there like this but it’s hard for me to imagine.

Miranda and Mrs. Schneider are two characters I absolutely HATED!! It got to the point where I just wanted to skip their point of view altogether. There are things that happen to both characters in the book but I still don’t really get what the point of having their point of view is though. The book would probably have been a lot better without them.

The Plot of The Ghost Tree:

Despite that, there are characters I feel were pointless to the story the plot is still pretty good. There are creepy aspects to the story that is really good and kept me interested. But there are parts of the story that are slow and dragged out. So, I kind of feel like there was a bit of a better edit through then the book wouldn’t have dragged out in some parts.

Also, I would have liked some answers to a few things. One of those things is if Lauren’s mother started believing in her mother’s stories. When Lauren’s grandmother told her about her family she claimed that Lauren’s mother did believe. But after all that had happened with her kids did she wind up believing in the end. I know this is vague but I don’t want to give away any spoilers about what goes on in the book.

How do you feel about horror books that take place in a small town?