Ella has just moved to a new town where she knows no one. From her room on the top floor of her new home, she has a perfect view of the dilapidated, abandoned Thornhill Institute across the way, where she glimpses a girl in the window. Determined to befriend the girl and solidify the link between them, Ella resolves to unravel Thornhill's shadowy past.

I have spent days and days in bed. I can’t face school. I don’t want to see anyone. I can’t even read.” And from up here I overlook the houses where the real people, the regular people, live. Sometimes I watch them sleepily opening their curtains in the mornings, heaving out their garbage bags in their bathrobes, letting out their cats, feeding the birds. In the summer they have friends round and there's noisy laughter and tinkling glasses in the gardens, and on hot days I watch the squealing children splashing in wading pools or squabbling over tricycles. You know, regular, real people with regular, real families. Of course, sometimes that is all a bit much and I have to shut them out too. A chilling tale that highlights the importance of kindness and child advocacy while emphasizing the lasting damage wrought by abuse and neglect."— Publishers Weekly, starred review Asimismo este libro me ha parecido muy diferente a lo que suelo leer, no es una novela de terror ni mucho menos pero si que logra calarte en la piel la angustia vívida por su protagonista. Son tantas las situaciones en las que lo he pasado mal imaginándome en primera persona, que en ocasiones me ha costado avanzar en la lectura.

Foster homes are a place for abandoned children. Jacqueline Wilson famously referred to them as The Dumping Grounds in the Tracy Beaker series. And for the children put into Thornhill this is very much the case. The house is probably normal to the outward eye, but to their perceptions it reflects the mood of the place. Their carers are not as attentive as they should be; they miss the signs of bullying and their eventual responses to it help to facilitate such behaviour further. All in all, they do everything that foster homes shouldn't do. Woe to Mary and Ella, victim and perpetrator of a situation that could have been so easily resolved had it been recognised by responsible eyes.

All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. I have never read a book like this. I was so stunned at the end that I had to take a break from writing a blog about it, to absorb the message and the story. This is not a book for the faint hearted.Wow! Look at these new puppets! They're really fab, Mary! There are quite a few new ones since I was up here last." Her speech was finished. The dining hall was silent. Everyone was listening, watching, waiting to see what I would do. I realized that the only sound was the rattling of my knife on my plate as my hand trembled. I put it down and hoped no one else had heard it. A chilling ghost story with a dual narrative told partly in diary entries and partly in atmospheric, wordless sepia illustrations. Thornhill is told through journal entries and illustrations. As I said before this book wasn't scary to me as an adult but it was incredibly sad. Mary the orphan is being bullied on a daily basis and her life is a living hell but none of the adults that are suppose to be looking after her seem to care. Only one adult in her life even makes an attempt to help and even that was half assed. Mary only wanted to be friends with the other kids in the orphanage and to make her creepy little puppets but instead she was made fun of, shunned and treated like garbage. The adults could and should have stepped in but instead they chose to actively ignore it.

I must have had a look on my face because she hurriedly added, "I know you haven't been able to settle anywhere yet, Mary — but that's different. People find the quietness unsettling, that's all. One day there'll be someone special who doesn't expect you to be jabbering on all the time and you'll have a proper home, better than this creaking old place."

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Through these topics, and the Gothic atmosphere the British author imbues her illustrations with, Thornhill is a deeply sad novel that transmits a crippling feeling of hopelessness, sadness, despair, and, above all, of loneliness. In a crescendo of emotions, Thornhill reaches its peak in an outburst of desperation, very reminiscent of Stephen King’s Carrie —even if Mary’s outburst is rather futile. In any case, in the end, when both timelines collide, Mary finds what she had missed throughout her entire life: a friend who loves her for who she is. The end transmits a crystal-clear metaphor: neglect has its consequences and even if the victim of it will not end up alone, it will scar their existence for life —and death. Hay ciertos libros que tienen la capacidad de recoger tus absurdos prejuicios hacia ellos, pisotearlos, darles un par de vueltas, y devolverte tus ideas preconcebidas envueltas en un papel de regalo. Esos libros que no lees porque das por hecho que no estaban escritos para ti, que son simples entretenimientos para chavales sin elevadas ambiciones y que, en definitiva, juzgas sin concederle una mínima oportunidad. Today she walked with me. The others just carried on chattering, but she slowed and walked at my pace. She asked me how I was. I didn't raise my head to answer, I just kept watching the ground. She carried on talking anyway, telling me what it had been like with the last foster family. At first I was tense and worried but found myself being more and more curious.