Doll Bones was the first of three stories I read by Holly Black in 2018. I didn’t realize it was a YA book when I started it, but I liked it enough to continue listening once I realized it was.
The story is about three kids named Zach, Poppy, and Alice who all play together and, now, at about 12 years old are caught between being kids and being teenagers. One of the characters in their game, the Great Queen, is based on a doll Poppy’s mother keeps in a case. Poppy, not wishing to grow up and wishing to keep her friends close to her (she’s figured out Alice has a crush on Zach and that Zach is now, for a reason unknown to her but revealed to the reader, embarrassed by the fact he plays with them) tells her friends that she had a dream about the Great Queen, and she’s actually a haunted doll made of human remains that wants to be put back in the cemetery where she belongs.
Poppy, Alice, and Zach end up on a quest to return the doll to its rightful resting place.
This was a good story that captured the heartache of adolescence so well. Everything’s hard, everything’s awkward, everything feels like the end of the world, even though it isn’t. I related too well to Poppy’s sense of losing her friends, to Alice’s crush on Zach, to Zach’s embarrassment about doing “baby” things but still loving them.
That said, the “horror” aspect to this story was a little weak. It wasn’t clear if the doll was haunted or if the kids were imagining it. A little more background on the girl who was supposed to be haunting them would have been nice too.
I also was sad because it was over too soon. I think the whole audiobook was done in about 5 hours and I wished there was more of it. Or a sequel. Sadly, there’s not.
Doll Bones was a fun one. It also convinced me I wanted to read more of Holly Black’s book, which I did later in 2018.
words in scarlet ink 