The Haunting of Lily Frost (Nova Weetman, UQP)

For 15-year-old Lily Frost, the only thing worse than moving to a small country town and leaving behind her best friend Ruby is the alarming discovery that her new home—an old grey house looming at the end of a long street—might be haunted. Lily is strangely drawn to the attic room, but it’s a place where unsettling things happen, like water appearing on the floor, sudden drops in temperature and the sound of someone else’s breathing in the night. Lily soon discovers that her room once belonged to a girl named Tilly who vanished a year ago and, strangely, looked a lot like Lily. But did Tilly run away or is the truth more sinister? Life gets even weirder when Lily meets Danny, her cute classmate and Tilly’s ex-boyfriend, and his less-than-friendly twin sister, Julia. Do they know more than they’re letting on about Tilly’s disappearance? The Haunting of Lily Frost is a slow-paced but atmospheric debut from Australian writer and screenwriter Nova Weetman. The novel’s mild supernatural chills are well balanced with real-world drama, as Lily negotiates the difficulties of trying to fit in at her new school and maintain her friendship with Ruby.

Carody Culver is a freelance writer and editor and a part-time bookseller at Brisbane’s Avid Reader and Black Cat Books

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Category: Reviews