A fun start to what should be an exciting new series. Dont tell anyone, but I think there might be more to my housemates. To top it all off, I somehow got myself locked up in Lyle House, a 'special home' for troubled teens. Now there are ghosts everywhere and they wont leave me alone. Those who persevere through the rather slow start will find that this has more in common with Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment (if that were written well and had fewer plot holes) than it does with Gossip Girls: a group of kids with special powers trying to escape from scientists who want to experiment on them. Armstrong, Kelley, Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy fiction, Canadian, Ghosts - Fiction. It all started on the day that I saw my first ghost - and the ghost saw me. That would be a shame - with a touch of gruesome and edgy violence, and that last action-packed quarter of the book, along with ghosts, werewolves, and magic, boys will find just as much to like here as girls. The cover picture, showing a hot girl in a low-cut dress holding a ruby pendant, may convince some boys that this book is not for them.

By the end, though, Chloe and her friends have just barely begun on their journey to understand themselves and their world, which is quite different than what they have been brought up to believe. Before that, the author gradually builds up Chloe's (and the readers) understanding of what is happening to her and around her, though the reader will get there long before Chloe does. This is no slam-bang action-adventure, though it does get pretty exciting in the last quarter. Author Kelley Armstrong takes her time to get this story moving.

The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong