Frozen Charlotte

"Now Charlotte lives on the ,mountainside ,In a bleak and dreary spot.There was no house for miles around,except her father's cot."Frozen Charlotte (Frozen Charlotte, #1)by Alex BellMy review:Do NOT expect to clear your head of this book quickly if you choose to read this.Finally..a book full of scares and crepiness and no gore..well..very little anyway.You know what? I am not even going to do a plot summary..don't look. Go in, knowing little.This is a horror novel about dolls. And about twisted happenings and things that go bump in the night.Recommended to read at night..after it gets dark.It isn't that this is the scariest book I have ever read. It is just the EERIE factor..wow. Somehow this creepy little book manages to remain creepy and eerie through the whole thing. No easy feat.Elements are disturbing and I really think Stephen King would love this.Images conjured up do not leave one's head anytime soon.There are a few parts that are a little funny..like why the HECK did Sophie not leave in the first HOUR? OK..she wanted to find out how her friend died..but listen this poor chick has more happen to her in 24 hours than most do in a lifetime. She deserves the medal of honor for not leaving.In spite of how creepy this book was it isn't a five star read. And now I will say that if you plan to read this:Stop reading my review.SPOILERS:No explanation is ever given for what happened to Jay. We KNOW..or think we do..that it wasn't Rebecca. But Piper wasn't dead. So it would not be her either. So..who? Why was Jay killed? And by whom? No explanation is ever given and I almost rated it a 3 because of that since it was a major plot hole. I really wish someone could fill in the blanks.No matter. It was quite a freaky read and what I did not mention? The Charlotte back story, in which each chapter begins with a short limerick like the one I posted above, is interestingly just as creepy as the other aspects of the book. We get the story from one of the characters in the book but it is made more eerie by the quotes at the story of each chapter which are spooky enough to give one a chill..that was incredibly done.This was a real scare fest and thanks Meisha for the recommendation.

I won't lie, I found this to be a creepy read, as an adult, had I read it in my teens, I don't think I'd be sleeping at all after I finished it. Although I am outside the age of the intended audience, this one caught my interest for the author's use of the "Fair Charlotte", ballad, as the song had come to my attention on a Smithsonian Folkways CD, being listed undee the name "Young Charlotte". Researching the song's origin and history lead me to pick up the book. With some reservations, being outside the target audience, as I said. However, I quickly lay aside my reservations with the end of the first chapter. It drew me in from the start, with bits from the song-which was originally written as a poem in the 1800s-at the beginning of each chapter. I also found the characters to be very well-written, and I loved the mystery aspects of the novel, as well as the setting, it all lends an overall Gothic feel to the novel as a whole.

This review originally appeared on herestohappyendings.com.Horror is such a fun genre that is perfect for reading all year - not just during the Halloween season! Frozen Charlotte is a great horror read that would be perfect for reading at any time of the year, and it is sure to send chills down your spine no matter when you pick this one up!Frozen Charlotte, to me, is The Shining meets Dolls. It's a story about creepy dolls, a secluded islan, and a bit of a psychological thriller that will keep you on edge (and probably have you keeping your lights on when you go to bed)."'What are you doing?' the schoolmistress said.The girls looked up at her. 'We're holding a funeral for the Frozen Charlottes, Miss Grayson.''Well, stop it at once,' the teacher replied. 'I never heard of anything so ghoulish.''But, miss,' one of the girls said, 'they like being dead. They told us.'"The beginning (I'm talking like the first two pages) of this book did a lot to set the creepy tone for this book, and it only gets better from there. The beginning of the book, which is set in the early 1900's, has a bunch of small girls playing with Frozen Charlotte dolls at their school - small dolls that were popular during the Victorian era. The girls are holding a funeral for the dolls, who have informed them that they enjoy being dead.Fast forward to present day, where Sophie and her best friend Jay are sitting in a diner playing with a Ouija board app on his phone. While Sophie isn't too keen on the idea, she goes along with it to satisfy Jay's curiosity, and while doing so, something creepy happens - the lights in the diner go off, Sophie swears she can see a girl standing on a table, and creepy music starts to play. The next morning, Sophie is informed that Jay died in an accident while riding his bike home. Crushed with grief and not understanding how this happened, Sophie decides to go on a trip to see her cousins and her uncle on the Isle of Skye. Thinking that this will help her process her grief and spend time with family she hasn't seen in years, it's something that she starts looking forward to.However, when she gets there, that all changes. Sophie meets her cousins - Piper, who is upbeat, happy, and seemingly perfect, Cameron, who is a reclusive musician and who has a horribly scarred hand from a fire, and Lilias, who is afraid of everything - especially her sister's Rebecca's room. Rebecca died in an accident years ago, and now Lilias swears she can hear her dolls talking in the middle of the night - making her stay far away from that room.The house where Sophia's uncle and cousins live is the old school that we read about in the beginning of the book. The school with the Frozen Charlotte dolls, which are still there. In fact, Rebecca used to love to play with them before she died, and now they are all locked up in a cabinet in her room. While Lilias swears that they are alive and she can hear them in the night, everyone else says that they are just dolls. But the mysterious events that occurred around the dolls over the years are way too much for it to be a coincidence, right? And when Sophie begins hearing and seeing strange things in her uncle's house, there has to be a logical explanation to them...or are the dolls really alive, and is Rebecca's ghost really haunting them?Dolls scare the absolute daylights out of me at the best of times...so much so that I can't even have any of my daughters' dolls even looking at me without freaking out. I never liked dolls (probably because of my love for the movie Dolls, which is where I'm pretty sure this aversion came from), and that hasn't changed since I got older, either. They just always creeped me out...the way they stare at you...nope, not my thing. At all. Which is probably why this book scared me so much.This book is absolutely fantastic as far as horror novels go, and I'll be the first to admit that I had to put it down multiple times because I was too spooked to keep reading (I refused to even read this book before bed because I was so creeped out). It definitely had plenty of scary stuff going on, so if that's your thing, it's on you won't want to miss out on.I loved Sophie's character a lot - she wasn't one to sit back and let things happen, instead she takes charge to get to the bottom of things and figure out what's really going on. The whole time things are getting weird and downright terrifying, she isn't cowering in her room, but she's actually trying to get to the bottom of things. All of the characters in this book have plenty of depth - such as Cameron - he has had plenty of things happen to him over the years, and the relationship between him and his sister, Piper, is definitely a troubled one.The only character who lacked any kind of personality was probably Sophie's uncle...he really didn't add much to the story and I think for the most part it would have been the same with or without him around.The mysteries around the school itself begin to come to light when Sophie sets out to uncover what is really going on here. I found myself asking during the duration of the time I spend reading this book, whether or not the dolls were actually alive and scary as hell. I mean, there had to be some kind of explanation, right? You would think so...Anyway, if you love horror, especially the gem that is YA horror, do not skip over this book!Note: I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This is the perfect time of year to read this book if you're interested in a spine-tingling, bone-chilling, good ol' classic horror tale! Although, if you read it at any other time of year, it will still be just as frighteningly creepy!I love books that really get to you to the point where you actually end up looking over your shoulder and losing sleep over them. That's how much this book affected me. It's been a long time since I read a good thriller, in which I was truly scared to flip the page and read what happens next. When you watch a movie, you have the option of covering your eyes through the scary bits, but what do you do when you're reading a book? That night, I couldn't go to sleep until I had finished it, and I made my husband stay up with me until I did. Except, he didn't - he couldn't. So I read the book while he slept soundly next to me and I held his arm in a death grip. The creepiness levels of the book are super high, which is amazing for this genre, because it's not always easy to achieve the 'shivers-down-your-back' sensation.From the very beginning, when Sophie is sitting with her best friend Jay in a diner and he presents her with an app of a Ouija board, you know things are not going to end well. Nothing ever ends well with a Ouija board! Sophie can't take him seriously, but humors him, and soon after the lights in the diner go off, and while chaos ensues, Sophie could swear she could see a little girl standing on the table. When they lights are back on, Sophie and Jay both brush the whole thing off as a coincidence, and call it a night. Except, the next morning, Sophie is told that Jay had died in an accident on his way home. Her parents had planned on going on a trip and dropping her off to her uncle's house, but upon hearing the news of Jay, they tell her they will cancel and stay with her. Sophie stubbornly refuses, and tells them she needs the space right now, so spending time at her uncle's on the Isle of Skye is perfect. Now, I don't know, if as a parent, seeing my child's grief, I would have gone and left them, regardless of how much I paid for a ticket. However, for the purposes of this story, I let that one slide and just enjoyed it.So Sophie arrives at her uncle's house, which used to be a girls schoolhouse that was shut down after a series of murders had occurred, to spend the summer with her cousins - Cameron, Piper and Lilias. There also used to be a fourth cousin, Rebecca, but she died in an accident and they don't talk about her.Sophie can immediately sense something's off about this entire place, but can't put her finger on it, and assumes this is just her grief and guilt over Jay's death creating all these dark and somber images. She immediately hits it off with Piper, who is always exuding charm and positivity as she takes over as host and prepares the food and shows her around. Cameron, on the other hand, is more of a recluse and not particularly friendly either, self-conscious about his scarred hand and bitter about the fact that he can't play the piano anymore. For all his cold and hard demeanor, he immediately softens when he sees his youngest sister, Lilias, and Sophie notices how protective he is of her. Lilias has an unreasonable fear of bones, so much so, that all knives and sharp tools must be hidden as she has a tendency to want to cut her bones out of her body. Rebecca? No one speaks of Rebecca. No one is allowed entry into her room, which is filled with a creepy collection of antique dolls that Rebecca used to love and play with.That first night, Sophie could hear voices coming out of Rebecca's room, and tries to investigate. She later finds out that Lilias can hear them too, and she knows who these voices belong to. The dolls. The dolls are speaking to her, luring her, but she tells Sophie she has to ignore them, she can't listen to the dolls because they tell her to do bad things.Ouija board, ghost of a little girl, creepy talking dolls, and an old house full of weirdos? Yep. You got yourself a recipe for disaster. One that will scare the living daylights out of you.As the events unfold, and things reach a climax, we start to figure out who's who, what's going on, who's orchestrating the whole thing, why is the ghost haunting Sophie, and who's going to die next? If I were Sophie, I would've left as soon as I realized things weren't normal at this household. Sophie is a stubborn one though, and she's somehow convinced that figuring out what's happening will help her figure out what happened to her best friend, Jay.The ending was written brilliantly, and had all the right elements to cause you fear and panic, as well as that rush of adrenaline you get when you know the whole gig is up.I recently found out that a prequel had been released, and I've immediately ordered it! Just the thing I need for this season, so I can't wait to receive it.

Frozen Charlotte is a young adult horror.I’m picky when it comes to choosing YA fiction, and despite being a huge horror fan as a child and teenager, it’s not a genre that I often read these days. The reason I don’t read a lot of YA fiction, is I tend to find they lack the intensity I hope for. But this book was actually surprisingly creepy, tense and rather brutal in places. My teenage self would have loved this book.I also found the characters interesting, and really felt for them and their situation. At times I felt a little trapped and claustrophobic. I was also surprisingly spooked each night when I turned the light off in an attempt to go to sleep. I really need to avoid reading about creepy dolls just before bed!This is definitely one I recommend for those into YA and horror stories.

Frozen Charlotte was a delightfully quick spooky read. Set in an only schoolhouse now serving as a home to her uncle and cousins, Sophie comes face to face with the mysterious death of her young cousin and the legend of the schoolhouse and its creepy Frozen Charlotte dolls.I did enjoy this one, there's a nice balance of mystery and horror, and I'm the sort of person who finds creepy dolls absolutely terrifying.The characters were intriguing and each had secrets and issues of their own. Cameron is a musical prodigy whose dreams were dashed after he damaged his hand saving his little sister from a fire, and who now hides a darker side. Lilias was born into a family who had been truck by tragedy, she struggles with a debilitating fear of bones and sees the ghost of her dead sister. Piper seems friendly and kind on the outside, the one holding her damaged family together, but cracks start to show in her facade and you're left wondering if she's really as nice as she seems.The Frozen Charlotte dolls aren't the only villains in this story and Sophie struggles to learn who to trust after getting conflicting information from Piper, Cameron and Lilias.I will say that I was expecting a bit more of a twist to the story. After the build up and how much effort the author had gone through to confuse Sophie on who she should trust, the person responsible seemed a bit obvious long before it was revealed. I also found the villain scarier than the dolls. It was almost like the person was controlling the dolls rather than the other way around and that took a bit of the creepiness away from them.There was a shocking lack of parenting in this book. Sophie's uncle James was absolutely useless in controlling his children or dealing with the events that happened in the book. I appreciate that he's suffered the loss of a child and his wife has been committed, but he should still be putting the welfare of his remaining children before everything else. He seemed more interested in his paintings than making sure they were ok.My other complaint was the ending. After all the build-up I was hoping for a little more than a cautious bit of hand-holding between Sophie and Cameron and the ending related to the dolls was also left pretty open which I'm not really a fan of - I know this is personal preference, I have a friend who also read this and really liked the way it ended for the dolls, but I prefer something with closure.Overall Frozen Charlotte was a delightfully spooky read with some family mystery laced in with the horror. It's a fast-paced page turner and I would definitely recommend this to YA horror fans.

I read this book in two sittings and absolutely loved it. It draws you in with a creepy prologue that sets up the events perfectly and then launches straight into the story: there's no hanging around here, it's pretty much suspense and weird happenings all the way through and it's perfect.Sophie was a perfect narrator to guide you through the story. Her reactions to the events were very realistic, which I think can be hard to do when writing a modern ghost story. It's so easy to be sceptical of events and a narrator who believed them too quickly would be jarring, but Sophie had just the right amount of denial and then slow realisation of the reality of her situation.I loved each of the cousins for their unique characterisation and really enjoyed not knowing who to trust. I found Piper a little flat at first: she seemed to be a bit of writer's convenience at first as she explained a lot of back story and mythology but she soon fleshed out and became one of my favourite characters.And then the Frozen Charlotte dolls themselves. They are creepy as hell and the fact that they're real made them all the more spooky. I love the idea of the author turning the old song and Victorian dolls into this wonderfully scary story. They were amazing villains and I actually felt afraid to leave my room when I finished reading late at night. I could almost feel their tiny cold hands on me and I was terrified of what they'd do to me in my sleep.I'd thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys horror stories or is looking to try something a little different. It's a thrilling journey with a fast pace and a lot of twists that will keep you guessing right until the end. Just don't read it in an empty house in the dark as I did!

I got the book in the at 11:00 and finished at twelve! I LOVED it and it's one of the very best books I've read so far. Sophie the main character and narrator stays with her cousins in Scotland after her best friend drowns. Her uncle James and his three kids , Piper Cameron and Lilias live in an old house that in the 1900s was a school for girls. The girls at the school used to play with little white dolls called frozen charlottes but the school has a lot of bad luck since getting the dolls; a girl is blinded by some needles another falls out of the window and a teacher breaks her neck after being pushed down the stairs. Sophie's cousins have lost a child, Rebecca, after she found the dolls in the basement and frequently played with them. But that was in the past. Sophie experiences many horrors during her stay and the book will scare the crap outta you.One more thing, google frozen Charlotte dolls! I was pleasantly surprised to find the dolls are real and have an interesting history