Frozen Charlotte is the latest novel by author Alex Bell and part of the brand new Red Eye YA horror series from Stripes Publishing.
When Sophie’s best friend, Jay, shows her a brand new app on his phone, she thinks nothing of the ouja board game. What is there to be scared of surrounded by people in a coffee shop? Sophie pretends to call on her dead cousin Rebecca but suddenly the lights go out and no one can really explain away what happens next.
That same evening Jay drowns in a freak accident and although Sophie knows it doesn’t make sense, she’s too devastated to think about the circumstances surrounding his death. Instead she insists her parents continue with their planned holiday and goes to stay with her Uncle and his family. A family she hasn’t seen since her cousin Rebecca was alive.
The moment she arrives in her Uncle’s rural home on the Scottish island of Skye, she’s unnerved by the mourning family. Since Rebecca’s death her mother had been committed and the brother and two sisters she left behind seem stranger than ever.
As Sophie slowly starts to uncover the lies behind Rebecca’s death she begins to see why the little white dolls known as Frozen Charlotte are locked up so tight…but not tight enough.
As a young teen I devoured Point Horror books like my life depended on it and Frozen Charlotte rekindled all the nail-biting fun I had reading those books. Packed full of shifty characters you can never quite trust, a large isolated house, warring siblings and evil dolls, Frozen Charlotte is brilliantly creepy fun from beginning to end. What makes it even more unnerving is the way Alex Bell bases her tale around the real American folk song, Fair Charlotte. The lyrics tell the tale of a young girl who freezes to death after refusing to wrap up warmly during a journey to a party. The small white china dolls represent the girl in the song and these truths behind the fiction cause it to wheedle under your skin.
For YA horror that you won’t be able to put down, look no further than Frozen Charlotte.
Buy your copy of Frozen Charlotte by Alex Bell from Amazon here.