Victoria Schwab is a superb storyteller, blending well-crafted characters with a perfectly paced plot. I loved the idea of this semi-tangible thing that Cassidy could cast aside to enter the world of spirits, and you can tell that the entire dynamic of the Veil is one that Victoria has thought out in complexity, from the consistent rules it has. City of Ghosts is a super fun, spooky, and atmospheric read that follows Cassidy Blake, a young girl who can enter "the veil" and see the ghosts within. His inquiries take him from Leningrad to Moscow and involve victims of the Soviet gulags to the highest offices in the land. Lieutenant Rossel is a good but damaged character and main investigator of a macabre multiple murder in the Russian winter.

While Victoria Schwab is a beloved author, this is actually the first book I have ever read from her. The late-Stalinist era is vividly rendered in all its paranoid horror, the cast is colourful and the whole thing, with its emphasis on musicology and the horrors of the infamous Leningrad blockade, has a pleasing thoughtfulness, intellectual rigour and historical depth. Dont go intoo this expecting this too be as the queen her adult books , its middlegrade so its different and lighter. Als wäre dies hart genug, da der Täter fast keine Spuren hinterlassen hat, holt den Leuntnant seine Vergangenheit ein.I saw someone compare this novel to “Strangers Things meets Ghost Hunters” and I 100% agree with this sentiment.

Like, Cassidy does have a cat named Grim, but they aren’t brought up very much, and when they are it is in their carrier.That said, it is on the lighter end of the MG horror spectrum, so if you’re looking to hand a copy of this to a kid in your life, I’d say it’s suitable as long as they aren’t terribly easily frightened.

It was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, to the point at which, when I received the eARC approval notification, I literally stopped everything I was doing to start reading this. She loves fairy tales, and folklore, and stories that make her wonder if the world is really as it seems. At Books2Door, we believe that reading is a fundamental skill that every child should have to help improve their vocabulary, grammar, and critical thinking skills.And when her parents host a TV show about the wolrd most haunted places, they end up going to Edinburgh.