The Night Train

Savaryn, Lorelei. The Night Train

August 20, 2024 by Viking Books for Young Readers 

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Maddie and her twin sister Nat live with their parents, who have a YouTube show called "Wrecked to Decked" and renovate houses in their Midwestern town of Hush. The girls help out and appear on the show, and enjoy this somewhat unusual life. When they visit the sight of the next project, the Signalman's Cottage, Nat says she sees a ghost. The girls' grandmother, who died recently, also had a history of seeing ghosts, but their father always thought it was nonsense. Knowing that, Maddie, who also felt an eerie presence, tells her father that nothing was wrong, angering her sister. The girls are very different; Maddie runs cross country and plays volleyball, and Nat has been obsessed with the paranormal ever since their grandmother passed away. She has done lots of research, and has discovered that the cottage is tied to the most significant event in the town's history, an 1893 train wreck apparently caused when the signalman who drunk and didn't switch the tracks. A passenger train collided with a mail train, and everyone involved was killed. Every year, the town stages a reenactment, which takes place on Halloween. This was the birthday of the conductor, Alphaeus Fink, and also coincidentally Maddie's birthday (Nat was born 1 November). When Maddie lets Nat know she did see the ghost they called Sarah at a previous renovation, and can see the ghost of a girl with her mouth sewn shut at the cottage, the two know that they have to work together, as their grandmother would have, to help the spirits move on. Through their research they, along with classmate Westin, who is helping their parents film the renovations, find out that every 13 years during the reenactment, a child goes missing. Maddie finds a notebook kept by the most recent victim, who was the best friend of Oliver Fairbanks, who has grown up to be their teacher. Because Maddie's birthday is on October 31st, she has a connection to the train wreck, and because she has paranormal abilities, she is able to go through "thin places" and talk to some of the children who have been taken during the reenactment. What's going on? How is the man who acts as the conductor, Mr. Shanek, involved in this? Hush is a creepy place, and the train wreck would add ghosts to any location, but there's even more involved. Westin thinks that what is happening is a curse tied to a deal that someone made, a deal that involves sacrificing children at a regular intervals. There are a lot of pieces to the history and the curse that are revealed in a very tantalizing way that I don't want to wreck. Will Maddie be able to piece them together before she herself is in danger?

Strengths: This was one of those books that cause me to smile because the plot is so clever and I am surprised as to the direction the story. I've read a few books, so very little surprises me! The history needs to be understood in order to solve the mystery, but there are a lot of layers that are, again, a bit surprising. The tension between the twins added another level of interest, as did the appearance of paranormal powers. I loved the fact that the powers were paralleled with puberty; it's not always something welcome of enjoyable. Maddie doesn't WANT to see ghosts; she just wants to do sports. The twins also argue with their parents, who think that powers are silly and that their grandmother was making up her abilities. That is also a great way to explain how the parent child relationship changes in the tween years. The story of the conductor and his daughter was very interesting, and I was glad that we do get to hear her side of the story at the end of the book. Westin is a helpful character to have to balance out the twins. The fact that the reenactment is occurring in just a few days lends an air of urgency to the story. Very well done, and probably going to be my favorite book of the month! (It's the first book I read in May, so I should at least keep an open mind.)
Weaknesses: This is another title I read while on a bus of 8th graders going to DC, and the intricacies of plot involving the times on the watches took more mental effort to figure out than I had. Also kind of doubt that the watch company would still have any records of a watch purchase from that long ago. Did enjoy the fact that the children went to the library to research the event in the newspapers!
What I really think: This had an effective blend of history, mystery, and horror that will appeal to fans of Currie's It Found Us, Cohen's The Shadow Grave, and Duga's The Ghost in the Headlights. Feels a bit like some of Dan Poblocki or Mary Downing Hahn's work, which is always a good thing.