The Strangers on Montagu Street

September 19, 2011
White’s third Tradd Street paranormal (after 2009’s The Girl on Legare Street) delivers powerful emotions, weird old Charleston architecture, and a hint of mystery as psychic realtor Melanie Middleton and her boyfriend, bestselling author Jack Trenholm, navigate their treacherous relationship. Nola, Jack’s 13-year-old daughter, adds an extra challenge by arriving on his doorstep from California after her drug-addicted songwriter mother’s suicide, with her mother’s guitar in hand and her mother’s comforting but restless spirit in tow. When sullen Nola becomes haunted by evil spirits living in a beautiful antique dollhouse that Jack’s mother gives her, tracking down the story of the house on which the miniature home is modeled becomes a priority. Charming and complex living characters, combined with unsettled ghosts that balance uncanny creepiness with very human motivations, keep this story warm, real, and exciting.

October 1, 2011
In the third of White's series starring psychic Realtor Melanie "Mellie" Middleton, Mellie copes with the warring ghostly denizens of another Charleston historic home. Any jokes about her failure to predict the housing bubble aside, Mellie's clairvoyance is more the "Sixth Sense" variety: The dead people she sees are not just any dearly departed. The spirits she wrangles are an occupational hazard of owning "This Old House." As her 40th birthday approaches, Mellie's on-again, off-again flirtation with heartthrob Jack is off: he's dating her cousin, pretty-in-pink Rebecca. Mellie's mother and father, for decades estranged from her and each other, are back in her life, and she and her opera diva mother share ghost-hunting duty. Jack learns he has a 13-year-old daughter, Nola, when the teen lands on his doorstep. Since her mother, singer-songwriter Bonnie (a drug addict who committed suicide), told her that Jack deserted the two of them, Nola doesn't trust her father. (Indeed, his personality is so volatile that readers will wonder why anyone, including Mellie, would.) Nola finds shelter with Mellie, who notices Bonnie hovering nearby. As Mellie tries unsuccessfully to nudge Bonnie toward the light, poltergeists attack the antique dollhouse in Nola's bedroom. And no wonder: The dollhouse is a replica of a decaying mansion on Montagu Street inhabited by the last of the prominent Manigault family, Miss Julia, an ancient piano teacher. Mellie convinces Nola to take music lessons from Julia, and Julia asks Mellie to contact her brother William, who has been dead since 1938, the year that Julia's fiancé Jonathan also died, followed shortly by her parents, Harold and Anne. Ever since, Julia and her house have been haunted by the contentious ghosts of William and Harold. Although her visions of hollow-eyed Harold convince her he's evil, Mellie suspects that Julia herself is no angel, and that merely helping William and Harold to "move on" will not lift the Manigault curse. Additional ghost-sightings would be vastly more entertaining than the tepid romance subplot.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2011
The latest in White's Charleston, South Carolinaset Tradd Street series continues its trademark otherworldly creepiness and intricate human entanglements while also featuring the longing ghosts that hover around Melanie Middleton. When Jack Trenholm, the object of Melanie's conflicted affections, shows up on her doorstep with his alienated teenage daughter and asks whether she can keep the girl for awhile, Melanie warily agrees. Nola is defensive, a touch spoiled, and crying for attention in typical rebellious fashion. Her mother has just died, after all, but her ghost is hanging around. Things take a disturbing turn when Jack's mother buys an antique dollhouse for Nola in an attempt to reach the emotionally closed-off teen. The dollhouse harbors malevolent entities, and they make their presence known. A realistic balance among Melanie and Jack's back-and-forth relationship, Nola's angsty expressions, and the sinister overall tone is achieved with careful flair. Followers of the series will be eerily charmed, and those who enjoy their southern women's fiction with a paranormal twist should gravitate toward this title, as well.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)