The Tricksters

New Zealander Mahy is an acclaimed author of children's fiction. It's Christmas at midsummer in this novel, where worlds collide and intrude when the Hamilton family and their friends go to stay in their seaside holiday home, Carnival's Hide. The house has an eerie past. Teddy Carnival, the son of the man who originally built the house, drowned in the bay long ago and this ghostly history affects all who go there, including 17-year-old Harry, who fancies herself as a writer: after a frightening experience when swimming where the young man disappeared, she feels herself being drawn back to the time of the young man's death. Then three sinister and seductive brothers appear claiming to be related to Carnival. Harry, always the outsider, perceives the young men to be casting a dangerous spell over her sister Christobel, the other family members and even her sceptical self. The book has a slow start, introducing the characters and setting the scene. But with the arrival of the mysterious brothers the pace hots up and the reader is caught in a magical mystery thriller that hints and tantalizes along the way but doesn't give any definite clues. Are the brothers real or a creation of Harry's imagination and the book she is trying to write? Does she influence them by her thoughts and her writing? By the end of the book the brothers reveal themselves to be more than ghosts from the past, but also a catalyst for revealing darker secrets within the family as the proverbial skeletons tumble from the closet. A young adult readership would enjoy this pacy, shivery thriller. (Kirkus UK)