I like Ms. Cotter's stories. I read The Painting a while ago and thought it was good read for 4-6th graders. I just discovered this one during Covid shut downs and gave it a shot. Another winner! I enjoyed the reding this book. The characters are interesting and I think will be relateable to grade schoolers. The story has some nice twists and turns the kids will enjoy. And just enough magic to keep them reading! I look forward to reading other works by Ms. Cotter!

What a creepy kids' book! (with a gorgeous cover) I had never read a middle grade horror with a spooky dollhouse, but now I need more of them! This book was just the right amount of scary for the targeted age demographic, and Alice and Lily are such fun, relatable characters to follow. Highly recommended for fans of Lindsay Currie or Mary Downing Hahn!

Thank you to the publisher and to Netgalley for granting me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

An enthralling story full of atmosphere for the cold seasons!
Perfect for readers of The Haunting of Aveline Jones.

Young Alice Greene knows there is a problem with her parents marriage. The family vacation was canceled because of her father’s work and her mother Ellie is tired of playing second fiddle. Since their plans changed Ellie Greene decided to take a job caring for the elderly Mrs. Bishop who has been incapacitated due to a fall. Alice must go with her mother and she is hugely disappointed all her summers plans will not be fulfilled.
During the train trip to Mrs. Bishops house there is a minor accident and Alice bumps her head. Being a trained nurse Ellie thinks Alice might have a minor concussion but plans to keep a close eye on her daughter. Mrs. Bishop’s house turns out to be a grand but spooky place to stay. Mary Bennett is the cook and housekeeper but she does not live in. Her young daughter Lily accompanies her and befriends Alice.
Alice discovers a dollhouse in the attic that is the exact replica of the house she is staying in. Once Alice goes to bed only to be awoken by a young girl who looks exactly like one the dolls in the dollhouse.
Things with the dollhouse begin to change and Alice knows she must try to understand what is going on. With Lily’s help Alice is determined to find answers.
THE DOLLHOUSE: A GHOST STORY is an engaging and entertaining story. The characters and storyline are engaging. I would readily recommend this book to any young reader looking an interesting and captivating story.
Than you to Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced digital edition of this book.

This book was just the right amount of terrifying. I love that there is a creepy, mysterious dollhouse--it brought me right back to my childhood, of squinting in the dark and wondering if my toys were moving.

Alice's parents' marriage is all but over, and the final straw is when her dad announces he isn't going on their annual family vacation because of a work trip. In return, Alice's mom announces she is taking Alice and accepting a job as a live-in nurse for a wealthy older woman. Alice and her mom reach the home of crotchety Mrs Bishop, where Alice is warned to neither be seen nor heard as the old lady does not care for children who will dirty her home and break her things. Alice is befriended by Lily, the housekeeper's daughter, who tells her of the mysterious happenings of the home. Together the girls find a hidden room which only contains a dollhouse that is the exact model of Mrs. Bishop's mansion. After finding the dollhouse, the girls discover that what happens in the dollhouse mysteriously crosses over into real life, including the dolls who seem to be ghosts. Alice dives deeper into the mysteries, endangering herself and causing her to wonder if she is really alive or if she is the one who is the ghost.

I love dollhouses, so this book and description immediately caught my attention. The story immediately pulls in the reader: the huge fight, the train accident, and the mean old lady. I got a little confused with which was the "real" world, though, as Alice moved back and forth from the dollhouse world to her world. The book is definitely suspenseful right up to the end. I would recommend this book to fans of Mary Downing Hahn and Lindsay Currie.

Adorably haunting and heartfelt, The Dollhouse: A Ghost Story actually had me in suspense for more than one reason on more than one occasion!

I'm an absolute sucker for any creepy or spooky story, and this one was a great one! Middle grade horror is such a fantastic subgenre, and this book is the perfect addition to it. I loved the characters in this book, and the dollhouse in the book was so creepy! My students can't read enough horror, and I think they are really going to love this one!

Charis Cotter's books remind me very much of Mary Downing Hahn's work. This one is no different. We have a child in a new place, a mystery, and a bit of the supernatural at work. At no point did this book come across as scary, but not all ghost stories have to be frightening, so I was OK with that. This book is definitely more mystery than horror.

Alice and her mother are spending the summer in Mrs. Bishop's enormous house full of antiques. Mrs. Bishop has had a nasty fall and Alice's mother is to be her live-in nurse. While exploring (and the house is full of secret passages and locked doors), Alice discovers a dollhouse - an exact replica in miniature of the house they're staying in. Alice discovers something else, too - a ghost in her bed. But is it a ghost, or something else? Why do the changes to the dollhouse affect the ghostly experiences/dreams that Alice has - and vice versa? Who is Mrs. Bishop, and what secrets does she keep hidden?

Mixed in with the mystery are some modern real-life issues. The main character's parents separate (rather abruptly) at the beginning of the book and thus she is dealing with this throughout the story. We have a couple of characters with developmental disabilities which are explained only in the vaguest of terms. I think this was an attempt at inclusion but I'm not sure how well it worked. The main character herself seems to suffer from sometimes-crippling anxiety and has a tendency toward catastrophizing.

While not my favorite of Cotter's stories, I did enjoy the mystery and the hazy-childhood-summertime feel of the book.

Creative and unique, with interesting gothic elements and a great spookiness. Young readers with a fondness for spookiness will definitely enjoy this one.

An eerie little tale that twists and turns through dreams and memories. The story appears simple with familiar elements of a ghost story: a creepy old house, a mysterious dollhouse, nightmares. But soon the story wades into memories of a family long past and the house and dollhouse come alive blending together giving the whole story a dream-like quality.

As a middle-grade story, it also dabbles in neurodiverse characters, divorce, and complex parental relationships where it makes sense to the story.

As little Alice tumbles further down the proverbial rabbit hole, the story builds every time she closes her eyes. Perfect for little fans of ghosts, historical fiction, girl-lead fiction, and spooky dollhouses.

I loved this book! It was so suspenseful and I loved the mystery. The plot was great and I loved the small details that worked its way into the book. This is definitely a great read!

A nice addition to the world of spooky middle grade reads. It took me a while to get to this one but i was glad when I did.

Thank you Netgalley and Tundra Books for the gifted book I read along with the library audio.

This book sucked me in and transported me into the dollhouse. It is the perfect balance of Gothic horror and middle grade that makes it not too scary but still a bit haunting. And every moving complicated piece of the story about a possibly haunted dollhouse, and the ties it has to the past were handled so deftly that I didn't have to overthink how everything worked and was just able to enjoy the narrative.

Content Warning: This book deals with grief and divorce.

This is the best middle reader ghost story I’ve encountered since Katherine Arden’s Small Spaces.

Cotter has written a fantastically atmospheric, sweet, and thoughtful portrait of friendship, family, and reckoning with grief, all cloaked in a gorgeously evocative setting that moves between a creeping, foreboding present and a dreamy, intriguingly sinister past in a crumbling old house with a doll house replica inside.

Dolls and dollhouses are always good for creepiness, and Cotter has succeeded and striking a perfect balance between that eeriness and maintaining an age-appropriate tone for the age group in the intended audience. Yet because it’s so well done, even adult readers of middle grade fiction will love this one. It’s smart, touching, and gorgeously written.

Cotter is a new author to me, but this lovely story has motivated me to seek out more of her work. What a delightful read this was.

When she finishes school for the year, Alice finds out her parents are getting divorced and they’ve cancelled their yearly summer cottage vacation. Instead, Alice and her mother travel to a small town so that her mom can be a live-in nurse for an elderly lady, Mrs. Bishop. Alice becomes friends with Lily, a developmentally delayed girl, who visits the home while her mother cleans it. The girls find a dollhouse in the attic that’s a perfect replica of that house. When Alice goes to sleep that night, she wakes up in a dream with a girl next to her. In her dream, she sees a family who lived in that house from the 1920s, and who look just like the dolls from the dollhouse. Then, things in the dollhouse change when Alice isn’t there. Alice has to figure out what the connection is between her dreams and the dollhouse.

This was a really creepy story. There were many similarities between Alice’s story and the story from the past in her dreams. There were train accidents in both stories. Alice’s friend Lily was developmentally delayed, and a girl named Bubbles was the same in her dream. The dollhouse was also an important aspect of the stories. Alice discovered it hidden away in the present storyline, but it was just being built in her dreams. Since the two storylines were quite similar, it was a little disorienting sometimes to figure out what was happening.

There were some more mature themes than I expected in a children’s book. Alice was concerned about her parents getting divorced. In her dream, her friend Fizz was also afraid of her parents getting divorced, and she caused a rift between them. There were also references to alcohol abuse and the death of family members. These mature themes increased the tension in the story.

The Dollhouse is a creepy ghost story.

Thank you Penguin Random House Canada for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I don't want to rate this because I didn't finish it. I read 55% and unfortunately it couldn't keep my attention. I thought it would be more of a spooky ghost story but it turned into a ore campy fantasy about a magical dollhouse. At least the ghosts were there.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This one's a thinker.
I still have so many questions - not in a bad way but in a twisty-turny, what-the-heck-did-I-just-read, blown-my-mind kind of way.
I didn't realize this was a middle school aged book. I only found that out when I read the extra details and other reviews. As an adult I was really entertained and into the story. A lot of books for that age group sort of talk down to kids and make it possibly less enjoyable for adults. This was straight forward language neither in a complicated way nor in a too simple way.
This was a great story. Great for any kids who love to be creeped out or for any adult who likes the same. There are parts that are up for your own interpretation. I'm still confused on what was real and what wasn't. But those kind of thrillers are often fun. This one was!

(I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley.)
‐‐------------------------------
**The formatting in the doc I received was really messed up. I hope it's not like that in the final retail version.
**I really liked the acknowledgements at the end! It was fun to learn your inspirations for your story!

Atmospheric and entertaining middle grade read which I would have devoured at that age. Will be under more than one tree this holiday season.

Instead of spending her summer with her parents and friends at a fun cottage, Alice now must spend her summer with her mom and her nursing patient, Mrs. Bishop in Blackwood House while her parents contemplate divorce.  On their way to Blackwood House, Alice's train makes a hard stop and Alice gets a concussion and must spend time resting.  Blackwood House is full of antiques that Alice can't touch and the cantankerous Mrs. Bishop;  however, Alice finds a friend in the house cleaner's daughter, Lily.  Together, they explore Blackwood House and find a dollhouse replica of Blackwood House  in the attic. Alice begins to dream of the dolls in the dollhouse and slowly, what happens in Alice's dream dollhouse world begins to affect real life and real life begins to affect what is happening in the dollhouse. 
The Dollhouse is a haunting and magical middle grade mystery.  Though written for a middle grade level, I was easily pulled in by the intrigue of the dollhouse and the wonderfully written characters.  Alice was highly imaginative and anxious, placed in a setting where her imagination could run wild and dealing with many novel situations.  Lily has a developmental difference that allows her to see the world as open and welcoming.  I really enjoyed that Alice and Lily were fast friends.  The dollhouse world was fascinating.  I equally enjoyed the girls in the dollhouse, Bubbles and Fizz and how they reflected people in Alice's real world.  The mystery of the dollhouse and how Alice was connected to it kept me guessing until the end.  The themes that Alice and Mrs. Bishop dealt with throughout the book, grief, divorce and  loss of self identity are just as engaging.  

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.