Review: City of Ghosts (Cassidy Blake #1) by Victoria Schwab

City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab

Pages: 272

Format: E-Book

Published By: Scholastic

Genre: MG - Paranormal, Horror
Series: Cassidy Blake

Rating:
✮✮✮✮

Review:

The first book in a series following a young girl whose parents are a ghost-hunting team traveling across the world for their new tv show, City of Ghosts was a darker Middle Grade horror novel with just the right number of paranormal spooks for a younger audience.

Cassidy Blake travels to Scotland for the first part of her parents' documentary with her best friend who happens to be a ghost. She was gifted with the ability to travel between the living world and the dead world resulting from a near death experience when she was younger.

In Scotland, things take a very dark turn when Cassidy learns that children have gone missing, and it has something to do with a lady known as the Red Raven. With the help of another girl like her named Lara and her best friend, Cassidy decides to hunt down the Red Raven.

I really liked all of our central characters: Cassidy, Lara, and Jacob. They were very lovable characters, but also very simply written with not a lot of depth to them. I look forward to seeing how they grow as characters in the next books.

Another huge hit was the legend behind the Red Raven. She is based on a Mourning Mother ghost, which is a mother whose children die along with her, and she comes back as a spirit to take children from their parents. She also reminds me of the Piped Piper of Hamelin.

Even though I really enjoyed the novel, I did find the pacing to be slow and the story to be very straight-forward, lacking any surprise twists or turns. Which were the two biggest downfalls of the book. Despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed this story and cannot wait to continue with the two remaining books in the series.