Nancy Holder

Possessions — (2009-2010) Publisher: The It Girl meets The Exorcist in this chilling, haunted boarding school tale. New-girl Lindsay discovers all is not right at the prestigious Marlwood Academy for Girls. Ethereal, popular Mandy and her clique are plotting something dangerous. Lindsay overhears them performing strange rituals, and sees their eyes turn black. It doesn't help that the school itself is totally eerie, with ancient, dilapidated buildings tucked into the Northern California woods, a thick white fog swirling through campus. There are hidden passageways, odd reflections in the windows at night, and scariest of all is the vast lake rumored to have captured the ghost of a girl who drowned many years ago. What Lindsay doesn't yet realize is that Mandy and her cohorts are becoming possessed by spirits who have haunted the school for two hundred years. Spirits who want someone dead... And that someone is Lindsay.

Once Upon a Time — (2004-2007) Young adult. These are retellings of classic fairy tales: Beauty and the Beast, The White Bride and the Black Bride. Find more at our Cameron Dokey page.

Spirited

During the height of the French-Indian War, Isabella and her father, who is a doctor with the British army, are making their way to a new fort through the New York wilderness. In the meantime, Wusamequin, a Native American brave who is looking to avenge the death of his wife and child has a vision of soldiers crossing through the lands of his people. In a fit of rage Wusamequin leads a party of warriors against the English. Impressed with the way Isabella fights back, he spares her life and takes her into his home as his slave, though soon both of them begin to realize that they are becoming much more than servant and master.

I liked the idea behind Spirited; I love stories where Native American tribes take in settlers and the settlers learn that all they have been taught about “Indians” is wrong. It’s a classic theme, I know, but I can’t help liking those kinds of stories anyway. The hitch with Spirited, however, is that Nancy Holder decided to insert lots of different kinds of magic and folklore into the plot.

For example, little fairy beings come to Isabella while she is a prisoner in camp. They help her learn the language and keep her safe from those in the tribe who would do her harm. Now, some little touches of magic in a story are fine with me. These touches did take Spirited from the “historical fiction” category into fantasy, but then Holder took it to the next level.

Once vortexes started to open and Isabella and Wusamequin started fighting off evil spirits in the dream realm, Spirited jumped from “interesting” and into the ridiculous. It was like I was reading two different books. Spirited started off as a great historical fiction with a little Native American magic thrown in and became a sci-fi/fantasy that happened to be set in the 1700s. It reminded me of that episode of “The Big Bang Theory” where Sheldon is walking around a Renaissance fair dressed as Spock. The two just did not go together.

To top it off, in the epilogue Holder says that Spirited was a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I must be a bigger idiot than I thought, because I totally didn’t get that at all. In fact, I was baffled when I read that last part. If I flip through Spirited page by page, I can kind of see the similarities, but a retelling? That’s stretching it. A lot.

In conclusion, I didn’t “get” Spirited. The plot left me confused and kind of upset at the end, I found the characters to be very one-dimensional even for a YA book, and I put down Spirited feeling very unsatisfied. I have a couple more of the Once Upon a Time books in my pile, but after this one I might shove them towards the bottom. A very generous 2 stars. —Julie Waineo