Plot: Widowed artist Beverly Vernon, living alone in Florida, is struggling to come to terms with how her life is now, with her children living far away and no grandchildren in her near future. Instead, she paints a picture of the grandchild she wishes she had. But then she makes a grim discovery: the bones of a child in her backyard, hidden away under layers of discarded bricks. Soon she begins to notice strange things happening in her house: did the portrait really change, and how did those things appear where they weren’t before? Trying to uncover the truth about who the child was and why these things are happening isn’t easy.

My thoughts: This wasn’t a bad read, but not a favourite. It was pretty quick and easy, and even though the subject matter is to do with a child’s ghost and body being found, it was quite a light read too. I loved the setting in Florida, and I loved the quirkiness of the main character. The only problem I had was that it wasn’t written in a style I particularly enjoy – it was just a little too on the chatty side – and, at times, wasn’t quite as gripping as other books I’ve read. Nevertheless, it made for a good filler read.

Beverly Vernon's life is changing. She's a widow now. Her daughters are grownup. She lives in Florida. And her newest illustrated children's book got rejected by her agent. Then she uncovers the long-buried bones of a child in her backyard and begins painting a portrait of the dead child. What starts out as something akin to art therapy and creation of a make-believe grandchild ends up becoming supernatural...and dangerous.

I really enjoyed this book. The supernatural and mystery aspects of this story melded together perfectly. I like Beverly as a main character. She's having a bit of a rough time adjusting to being older, but shows courage and intelligence when faced with a situation totally out of her comfort zone. While her two daughters annoyed me somewhat in the beginning, I had to get a grip on my emotions and realize that they really have Beverly's best interests in mind. An elderly woman talking about ghosts, haunted portraits and the like.....I'd probably think she had a few screws loose as well. In the end, they all banded together and investigated as a family.

I'm gearing up for Halloween season, and this was a great story to start out with. The mystery is suspenseful and interesting. The supernatural aspects are not overdone or melodramatic. The story progresses at a nice pace and I liked the characters (well all except one meddling, mean-spirited side character).

Great read! Nancy Springer has published more than 50 books. I will definitely be reading more from her! I enjoyed her story-telling and writing skills.

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Severn House via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own. No ghosts were exorcised during the reading of this book.*

A story to fill your heart with warm and cuddly loving thoughts.

Beverly Vernon has just had a phone call from her agent telling her that the latest children’s book illustrations are not up to standard and decides that digging up the hundreds of bricks in her garden will help her get over this disappointment.

One of Beverly’s biggest disappointments is that neither of her daughters has given her grandchildren. She decides to change her artwork from creating a happy fun-filled children’s book to drawing what she imagines her granddaughter would look like. This new work of art is going to take on a whole new meaning once she uncovers the body of a child that had been buried in the 1950s and lies beneath the bricks she’s digging up.

At first, Beverly thinks that she might be in the early stages of dementia when she finds that the painting changes from her original drawing of a beautiful young girl into the face of a young, deeply hurt child. Her daughters are also under the impression that their mother is losing her mind, even though they, too, witness some bizarre works of art drawn by a child that appear overnight (thanks to the paper and paints left out by Beverly).

Beverly decides that this child will not leave until its family has been traced and the child’s story is told.

This book didn’t grab me on page one. It took a bit of work to get into the flow of Beverly’s world of possibly losing the plot, but then the child appeared, and Beverly realises that it’s up to her to help the child find peace.

A beautifully written story with strong characters and a fascinating child trying to finally get justice.

Treebeard

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

A very interesting and enthralling book! It's very funny and very sad at the same time.
I loved Betty, so frail and strong at the same time, and loved the mystery.
It's not the usual paranormal mystery, it's a well dosed mix of these two elements.
The book is really well written and look forward to reading other written by Nancy Springer.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Severn House and Netgalley for this ARC

Grandghost: A Haunted House Mystery

Nancy Springer's GRANDGHOST is compelling and entrancing. What to do when caught in the doldrums of age and other disappointments? One could sit and mope about a stalled career illustrating children’s books, and the lack of grandchildren, but instead Beverly Vernon goes out to remove bricks from the yard she hopes will one day be a lawn. Finding a child’s skeleton could have been the last straw, but instead it becomes the first page of her new story, unraveling a sad mystery and connecting with new friends and allies, including her own daughters, now seeing their mother in a new light. Even the very judgmental "Christian" next door learns and teaches truths about being a good person. This is not an easy book, harm to children is horrible, but it is redemptive with a focus on doing right by the child, whatever it takes. “I’d rather be crazy with integrity than sane and heartless.”
The reference to techniques of making art are fascinating and echo our library’s summer art classes and a friend’s posts about her mixed media work. Creating in whatever medium is a wonderful thing. I’m grateful that Nancy Springer created this book.
“The best thing about my life was the way my job gave me relief from . . . bad news . . . hard work … Yet the joy and challenge of paining made everything else seem dismissible . . .”
Sunset and pantheism — “I feel a sense of deity, not as creator, but as the sunset itself, and the skein of ibis . . . and the trees . . . and the grass . . . the universe.”
“Not going to be what I expected . . . Did I want my grandchild to be real or didn’t I?”

An interesting book. I didn't expect it tbh. The storyline was different and in a lot of ways better than the premise promised. She really does seem like a busy body though, and while I love the fact that she eventually connects with everyone and the family and the twist about the skeleton I don't see myself reading it again. I guess it became a little too fluffy and not suspenseful enough. I would have liked a little more intrigue about the body, maybe a little more mystery there than the obvious culprit. I also simply didn't like the ambiguity of the mother's character - was she crazy? was she just a B? It was hard to tell and there wasn't enough for me to genuinely hate her despite her actions.

Grandghost is a story about a lady who finds a child's bones in her house. Beverley is a children's author and painter at the time of finding the bones she is painting the portrait of her imaginary grandchild. After finding the bones the portrait begins to change. Beverley has to find out what happened to the child. Although the book has a ghost in it it is not a scary story. This is a lovely story although sad in parts and I found it an enjoyable read and would recommend this book.

I very much enjoyed this complex and well written ghost story. Funny (Beverly is really kind of a hoot), utterly heartbreaking, and ultimately joyful. Warning: there is a child abuse scene that is among the worst I’ve ever read, so those who are particularly sensitive should keep that in mind.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ArC ebook in exchange for an honest review.

This book was not at all as I expected.
I didn't find it a "haunted house" mystery but a murder mystery involving child abuse.
I found it difficult to "get into" and really did not enjoy it.

Grandghost is a well written mystery.. pulled into the plot immediately. A new author to me and I enjoyed her writing style and will be reading more of her books. Fans of mysteries and ghost stories will enjoy.

Overall I really liked this book. It wasn't a ghost story novel in my opinion, but more of a mystery involving child abuse. I enjoyed the writing style of the author & I felt it didn't trail off.

Interestingly enough I managed to somehow unintentionally read two books back to back featuring a corpse of a child being uncovered. Guess there are only so many themes for genre to grab on to. You know that old adage this isn’t your father’s this or your mother’s that something, well this actually is precisely your grandmother’s ghost story. Told from a perspective of a grandmotherly character and featuring a level of quaintness I normally associate with what I imagine cozy fiction must be like. And this quaintness is somehow despite some very serious situations, like brutal and graphic child abuse, ghost related disturbances and so on. The grandmother character is a book artist, who at 67 seems to hear the siren call of Florida so irresistible to senior citizens and moves down there, despite not at all fitting in with the local yokels who say y’all with every sentence and commit other various crimes against grammar. She finds a skeleton buried in her yard, promptly begins being haunted and proceeds to resolve the situation in an amicable good natured way one would expect of a grandmotherly character. This isn’t exactly my sort of supernatural thriller, but it’s well written and so (pun alert) kind spirited that it made for an easy quick read to pass the time. Thanks Netgalley.

When she unearths the bones of a young child, Beverly Vernon's life is transformed in ways she never expected. 

Beverly Vernon is a widow who moved to Florida and is trying to adjust to the lifestyle, the language and the tea as sweet as candy!

With both of her daughters still living up north, she is on her own, with her art. She illustrates children's books with lovely, imaginative arts. But boy would she like some grandchildren! 

She is trying so hard to make sense of what her place in the world is now and when she unearths a child's body in her back yard she gets way more excitement than she bargained for!

Obviously the poor thing met with an unkind end and she decides to paint a portrait of what the child may have looked like all those years ago. Only the painting she leaves on the easel is not the one she finds in the morning. It just may be that the child has never left the house and is trying to communicate with her.

With both daughters believing their mother has lost her marbles and her holier than though neighbor trying to get her committed to the loony bin, Beverly charges full steam ahead and tracks down this childs family with the help of some great characters.

Although this could be a ghost story it was more the story of child abuse and secrets. Secrets that ruin entire families and how by reaching out to strangers can change their life and yours. This was a heart breaking tale as well as a heart warming tale of faith, acceptance, love and making a new family.

Very nicely done. Not what I was expecting, but I still enjoyed it!

NetGalley/

August 1st 2018 by Severn House Publishers

Review: GRANDGHOST by Nancy Springer

I totally loved this engrossing, emotionally involving, thematically multilayered novel! GRANDGHOST deserves far more than 5 stars. It's so impacting, and author Nancy Springer covers so much territory in this tautly woven tale. Beverly Vernon is a gifted artist whose career has focused on children's book.illustrations. Widowed with two almost middle-aged daughters and no grandchildren, she has moved from New Jersey to near isolation in the rural Florida Panhandle, glorying in nature and sunsets and Art. When her agent intimates that Beverly' s acceptance as a children's illustrator may be over, Beverly, who is very much her own person, begins painting an ideal grandchild. Then while cleaning up a sudden discovery of bricks piled at the back of her property, she unearths a skeleton. The consequences, many and varied, and the character evolution (not only Beverly's) are totally engrossing, and will live on in memory. GRANDGHOST is a Best of 2018!

The story and painting of the Grandghost was inspired by the main character Beverly Vernon’s finding bones buried in her back yard. It wasn’t a scary ghost story for the reader but an unsettling one for its’ theme of child abuse by a parent.

I loved this ghost story. It was about an artist who writes children’s books. Beverley is getting old she lives on her own and her agent will only consider her work if it can be delivered in a digital format. Beverley has an old phone and a very slow modem. She is starting to get forgetful and is afraid of getting Alzheimer’s like her mother. Her two daughters live too far away to regularly visit and she does not get along with her next door neighbour.
Beverley longs for a grandchild and to console herself she starts painting a young girl.
When things get to much for Beverley she goes out to her back yard and digs up old bricks that had been buried long before she bought the house. One day while she is digging up bricks Beverley finds a small child’s skeleton. After the discovery, Beverley’s life changes. Beverley starts to believe she is being haunted by the child and she needs to convince the police and her daughter’s that she fit and able to look after herself.
This was a ghost story about family relationships and child abuse. I loved the way this was written and how Beverley interacted with her neighbour, the police and her family members and new friends.

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley.
Beverly is not Mrs. Fletcher. This is not Cabot Cove. The dead body isn’t freshly dead.
Needless to say, Beverly is not having a good day. She isn’t sure about her income and then there is a skeleton in her backyard.
Springer’s mystery isn’t so much a mystery as opposed to a novel about family, community, and belief. It is about how first impressions can be both wrong and right, as well as defining what family is.
It should be noted that the mystery does deal with child abuse.
The story also deals with how society views older women, in particular those who are not traditional, and how much of the time they are written off as crazy cranks.
It is refreshing book too because the central characters are all women who are not discussing boyfriends or husbands. They are not in competition with each other, and, at the very least, they respect each other. This more than makes up for the somewhat obvious mystery of the skeleton as well as the low key creepy factor.
The use of art in the book is well done. Not only in the terms of it being Beverly’s chosen profession but also in the lives of her daughters. Her daughters are one of the best things about the book, concerned but not bitchy. What Springer gives us is a family, a true family with squabbles, but those of all families.

Beverly unearths a child’s skeleton in her backyard and

uncovers a 50-year-old cold case no one knew existed. The skeleton, clad in a rotted dress, shows signs of abuse and neglect. Beverly, longing for grandchildren, finds her house and her heart given to the ghost that manifests after the skeleton’s discovery, and she is determined to discover the mystery behind the child’s death and give their spirit peace. Her mission is complicated by her and her children’s real fear of losing her mental grip and fabricating the very mystery she seeks to solve.

This is gripping and heart-wrenching read at times, a story of a horrific life and death, but wound around the story of a mother’s relationship to her daughters, her love for them despite their disparate personalities, her desire for grandchildren, and an artistic empathy contrasted with another mother’s neglect, hate, and violence. It’s also the story of the children who survived that mother and how they struggled to do better, despite their circumstances, and how they manage to come together to support the lost sibling they’ve worried about for so long.

GrandGhost is at once a mystery, a cozy, and a horror, and to me, it simply refuses classification. You’re just swept into the story and the heroine’s life, rooting for her and the child’s spirit as Beverly struggles to give the voiceless a chance to speak, to offer release and redemption, and to free the siblings from the putrid grasp of their shared horrific history.

I’ve only read Nancy Springer’s fantasies before, and as with those wonderful books, with GrandGhost, she transports you into her world and makes you believe and invest in every moment and carefully crafted page. Just an emotionally-wrenching experience that resonates deeply and leaves you spent but satisfied at the resolution. Highly recommended.

I received this book as an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) through NetGalley. My opinions are my own.

4 stars

I read the Kindle edition.

Beverly Vernon has moved to Florida after the death of her husband to escape the harsh winters up north. She loves her new house – except for the numerous bricks buried in her yard. When digging out the bricks in a fit of pique after the rejection of her latest book by her editor she unearths a child’s bones. Because the bones were found with a dress, Beverly assumes that they belong to a little girl. The responding police officers are rather dumb and officious.

Beverly has two grown daughters who are childless. She wants a grandchild; a little girl to fawn over and love. She begins a new painting of a little girl. Then strange things begin to happen in her home. The portrait she has painted is not what she painted. It seems to be changing on its own. Is she going crazy? Senile?

When her two daughters come to visit, they also witness strange goings-on. The one daughter storms out in panic, while the other one stays. It seems a rift has developed in the family. But the sisters band together and defend their mother from an outside threat.

Beverly is determined to find out who the child in the garden is and what happened to her. When the bones are discovered to be those of a boy, not a girl, things get really interesting. A state police investigator takes over the case and the child is identified. The investigator is a woman named TJ Tadlock and she believes Beverly, as does the coroner Marcia Wengleman. This is a huge relief.

A woman who is a survivor of the family is found and tells her that her mother is still alive. She also tells a harrowing story of abuse and survival – at least for her and her sister. TJ tracks the mother down. She is now eighty-three and living in Alabama.

This turns out to be a remarkable story about a remarkable woman who has the insight and power to reinvent herself following both the death of her husband and the loss of her career. I really liked Beverly; her pantheistic notions, her relationship with her daughters and the ease with which she slipped into the role of caring for Sukie’s grandchildren. This is a well written and plotted novel. The events follow one another in clear and linear fashion. While on the surface, it is a story about the abuse, neglect and murder of a child, it is also filled with hope. I truly enjoyed the book. Although this is my first Nancy Springer book, I have the distinct feeling that it won’t be my last.

I want to thank NetGalley and Severn House for forwarding to me a copy of this marvelous book to read and enjoy.

Beverly Weston finds herself adrift. Her spouse is dead and her two adult daughters have not produced the thing that Beverly wants most – a grandchild. She’s moved to Florida, but is having a hard time settling in, so the former children’s book illustrator begins to paint a portrait of the grandchild she longs for. It’s cold comfort though, and then she finds the bones of a child who met a violent end buried in her yard. As Beverly searches for the child’s identity and answers about how they died, she senses something happening in her home. And her portrait appears to be morphing into something other than what she painted. Is she crazy, or is she haunted?