2023
WISE Score
A middle schooler battles a mysterious illness while her bedroom's Victorian wallpaper starts looking a little too alive.
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Anne Ursu is one of the best middle-grade writers working today, and this might be her most personal book. It’s a ghost story, sure, but the 'ghost' is the life Violet used to have before she got sick.
It’s haunting, frustrating, and ultimately very healing. If you have a kid who feels 'othered' or is struggling with the sudden social shifts of middle school, put this in their hands. It’s not just a spooky read; it’s a manual for how to be seen when the world wants to look away.
Perfect for the 9-13 crowd, especially those who like their ghost stories with a side of social commentary. Younger kids might find the focus on chronic fatigue a bit heavy.
The story centers on a family trying to support a daughter through a confusing health crisis, modeling deep empathy and the importance of listening to kids even when things don't make sense.
Anne Ursu uses the 'creepy house' trope as a brilliant metaphor for the isolation of chronic illness. The living wallpaper is a masterclass in atmospheric writing.
It is a ghost story, so there is genuine creepiness and psychological tension. The most 'unsafe' feeling comes from the medical gaslighting the protagonist faces, which can be frustrating or upsetting for sensitive readers.
This is a vital book for building empathy toward 'invisible' disabilities. It validates the experience of kids who feel ignored by systems meant to help them.
Anne Ursu has a habit of taking classic fairy tale or horror skeletons and draping them in very modern, very real anxieties. In Not Quite a Ghost, she takes the bones of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and updates it for a generation of kids who lived through a pandemic and the rise of 'invisible' illnesses like Long COVID or ME/CFS.
Violet is a great protagonist because her struggle isn't just with the creepy thing in the attic—it's with the fact that her body has stopped cooperating. Ursu captures the sensory details of chronic fatigue with painful accuracy: the way light hurts, the way a flight of stairs feels like a mountain, and the devastating realization that your friends are moving on without you because you’re too tired to keep up.
While the marketing leans into the Victorian ghost house vibes, the book spends just as much time in doctors' offices and middle school hallways. The horror elements are effectively creepy—the vine pattern on the wall that seems to pulse and move—but they serve as a physical manifestation of Violet’s internal state.
Parents should know that the book is deeply critical of the medical establishment and the way it often fails young girls. This isn't 'anti-science,' but rather a very honest look at how kids can be traumatized when their lived experience is dismissed as 'anxiety' or 'attention-seeking.' It’s a heavy theme, but handled with the kind of grace that makes it a great bridge for parents and kids to talk about bodily autonomy and trust.
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