Wait Till Helen Comes has been enjoyed by young readers of the horror genre for decades. Its eerie otherworldliness is made more chilling by the vulnerable humanity of its young protagonists. Molly and her younger brother, Michael, are uprooted from their familiar city life and moved to the country, where they must learn how to get along in rural life and how to get along with their new stepfather and his daughter. As if blending a family was not a difficult enough task, Molly and Michael discover a further complication. Their new home is haunted, and the ghost is not friendly.
This novel combines touching scenes of familial love with equally tense moments of family strife and mixes both with the spooky suspense of supernatural horror. The characters in the book are easy to relate to and seem like real people with some good personality traits and some flaws that make them more believable than the one-dimensional characters who often inhabit ghost stories written for children. This is especially true for Molly, as the story is told mostly from her point of view, and she has attitudes and struggles that middle grade readers will identify with.
The author uses the setting of this story very effectively, and the picturesque language with which she writes transforms what should be a peaceful, rural setting into a sinister backdrop. The characters’ unfamiliarity with the setting heightens the suspense, creating a story that is genuinely creepy without resorting to gore or the literary equivalent of cinema jump-scares. This book is hard to put down, as it has plenty of spine-tingling moments spread throughout an engaging plot.
Content Analysis:
Profanity/Language: Two religious exclamations.
Violence/Gore: Some minor property damage; a few verbal threats; an older child shakes a younger child; a few reports of deaths in a fire; a few reports of drownings; a character finds human remains; a few creepy scenes involving a ghost.
Sex/Nudity: Adults hug and kiss.
Mature Subject Matter:
Mention of child molesters (in context of being a societal ill); sibling rivalry (strife in a blended family); moving to a new home; death of a parent is a major theme.
Alcohol / Drug Use:
Mention of drug addicts, speculation that unspecified minors were taking drugs; characters find empty beer cans among other trash; an adult smokes a pipe.
