Lois Duncan (1934–2016)

This was the first book we read for my banned book club. The writing is very easy to get into and it's a quick read. I do think it will spark lots of discussions, which is great. This is the perfect type of book to read and discuss in a book club or classroom.

One downside is there's too many characters' POV and it's a short book so it makes it hard to connect with some of the characters and they sometimes fade into the background so you forget who they are. At the end when they mentioned Holly's name again I thought, "wait, was Holly part of the club this whole time?" That's how little we get of her POV. There are 10 girls in the club to begin with and having that many POVs for a book that's less than 300 pages makes it impossible to give each character enough time to feel like a fully fleshed out character, so some of them end up feeling flat. This would have been better if it just focused on maybe 3-4 girls max.

The pacing of the story felt uneven. Based on the synopsis, I thought the revenge schemes would have taken place earlier, but it took a long time before the first revenge scheme happened. Then after the first one occurred, the rest of them happened pretty quickly and then the book ended, so the ending did feel rushed. I am glad we got a little bit of an epilogue cause it did give some closure & resolution as to what happened with all the characters. Without that epilogue, it would have been a more open ended story, which is something I hate.

Overall, despite its flaws it is an engaging story and will spark a lot of good discussions. There isn't much graphic violence or any explicit sex scenes so this could work for younger teens or pre-teens as well.

Content warnings: Domestic violence and child abuse, suicide attempt, attempted sexual assault, teen pregnancy and discussion about abortion, emotionally abusive relationship between one of the teen couples, emotional abuse and manipulation of students by a teacher, sexism/misogyny, eating disorders, torture of a teen by peers, animal experimentation, and murder/attempted murder of abusive parent.… (mehr)

Short, economical and a good suspenseful read although, having just re-read this, I'm not sure if I guessed so early on, when I first read this many years ago, the major twist about the villain. This time the suspense element for me was when the protagonist was going to work it out. Duncan does drop the clues in fairly unobtrusively and a younger reader probably would not spot them too early on.

The characterisation of the villain might not go down too well with Wiccans as it's based on the stereotyped view of witchcraft/witches; I think the author could've just as easily had it that the villain was doing her ill deeds with mundane methods such as poison although the 'big reveal' scene does pivot on the villain's own belief about whether or not witches from the Ozarks appear in photographs. Anyway, it's quite a good read for a teen or pre-teen audience, although allowances need to be made for the 1970s setting, mainly the fact that photographs have to be developed chemically as this is long before digital technology.… (mehr)

4.25/5. 8.5/10. I read this back in the day when I was teaching middle school, and I decided to reread it. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Lois Duncan's books. 17-yr.-old Sarah poses as a fortuneteller at her new school's Halloween fair and soon discovers that she actually is able to see the future in a crystal ball given to her by her mother. The other students brand her a witch, and it's 1600s Salem all over again.

Tragically, Duncan's youngest daughter was murdered in Albuquerque, NM, prompting her to write WHO KILLED MY DAUGHTER? The killer was indicted in 2022, but sadly, Duncan had passed away in 2016, never knowing who killed her daughter. The only horror story she wrote after her daughter's death was this one, GALLOWS HILL.… (mehr)