Lingering Echoes by Angie Smibert is the second book in her Ghosts of Ordinary Objects series. I have not read the first book, Bone’s Gift, but I didn’t feel I was missing too much integral material by reading Lingering Echoes. There were some scenes that likely referred to incidents occurring in Book 1, but overall, I was able to follow Bone’s story with no problem.
Basically, Bone Phillip is from a family that develops “Gifts” at a certain age. Her deceased mother was a healer. One of her uncles can “read” animals. Bone’s Gift is the ability to see the history clinging to certain objects. For example, when she holds a certain sweater of her mother’s, Bone can “see” instances in her mother’s life, including moments before Bone was alive. Because of this ability, her best friend, Will Kincaid, asks her to read a certain jelly jar that was in his father’s possession when he died in a mining accident. However, Bone gets a feeling of danger from the jar, and is afraid of whatever strange power it possesses. But she’ll have to figure it out soon, before Will’s obsession with the jar consumes him.
This was a well-written book, with a lovely lyrical voice and just spooky enough that younger kids reading this might get a little tingle in their spine. I would recommend that anyone reading this look up Bone’s Gift and read that first, as I feel the reader would get more out of the story if they started with Bone’s first development of her Gift. Overall, a really quick read that is great for kids looking for tamer ghost stories.
Review of an Advance Reading Copy
This book was sent to Compass Book Ratings for review by Boyd’s Mill Press
Content Analysis:
Profanity/Language:11 mild obscenities.
Violence/Gore: A few instances of violence, including but not limited to: Frequent flashbacks/recollections/conversations of war, deaths from war, and people affected from war; many inferences to a character trying to drown someone in freezing bathwater; report of someone dying from influenza; many instances of characters plotting Halloween pranks, particularly a plan to egg a certain character’s house; a girl can “see” memories in objects, and occasionally has visions of other characters’ past violence; a mother and daughter occasionally fight in public; a character blames someone for her mother’s death; a girl often tells ghost stories to her friends; two friends have a verbal fight; a character has an object that another character feels to be dangerous; report of a man’s death; report of a character suffering broken bones; report of a mine collapse; report of whites only allowed in a baseball stadium; a girl goes to a cemetery at night to look for a friend; a boy suffers from trauma after the death of a family member; a girl has nightmares; characters are trapped in a mine cave-in, with some injuries sustained; report of an object stealing sound; characters throw eggs at a house, and one egg hits the owner; a mother and daughter fight, and the daughter says terrible things to her mother; a girl makes a boy mad enough to break something; a girl shouts at her mother’s gravestone.
Sex/Nudity: A girl senses a woman’s feelings for a man; a mother implies that a boy and girl are doing things they oughtn’t do together.
Mature Subject Matter:
Racial conflicts; Death of a family member; Death of a friend; Death of a pet; War; Child abuse.
Alcohol / Drug Use:
A girl misses the smell of cherry tobacco; a man smokes cigarettes one after another; characters sometimes smoke; character uses alcohol in tinctures.
