Ouija by Zoé-Lee O’Farrell

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Ouija by Zoé-Lee O’Farrell

The only thing for certain is the deaths were no accident.

Rayner High School – once a prestigious school – stands in ruins after such a terrible event.

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A year later, a group of friends return to the abandoned school and their nightmare begins. Something wants to get out and won’t take NO for an answer…

My Review

When I was a child my mother told me that she and my father had tried having a seance with a Ouija. In those days you made your own letters of the alphabet and used an upturned glass as the planchette. She said the ‘spirit’ got angry and the glass flew off the table and smashed on the floor. So a few years later my brother and I tried the same thing. Needless to say we didn’t conjure up any deceased relatives or demons, but it did have a marked effect on us. We are both still fascinated by ghosts and things that go bump in the night. However, I wouldn’t be trying to contact the dead in the place where a horrific crime was carried out.

But enough of that and on to the book Ouija, the brilliant debut from a new voice in YA horror fiction, Zoe-Lee O’Farrell. Now anyone who knows me is aware that I find there is a very thinly drawn line between horror and dark humour and initially I found some of that here. A bit like The Blair Witch Project of the late nineties, which I struggled to take seriously much of the time. But Ouija gets scarier and scarier, without ever resorting to the ridiculous.

The nineties was the decade of teen horror films and there were loads. Ouija pays homage to the best of them, but it’s not a slasher story like Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer (The Faculty is my personal favourite though that chucks in Sci-Fi as well), it’s all about lost spirits and a demon. Supernatural, the TV series which began in the early 2000s, immediately springs to mind.

I was slightly out of my comfort zone with Ouija, as my teen experience of horror was Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde and the books of MR James and Bram Stoker, but I really loved it. In a review on Goodreads, the reviewer refers to Ouija being for fans of Point Horror, Fear Street and Goosebumps. I think these are from my children’s generation – I’ve heard of Point Horror but not the other two.

Ouija is quite short and because of that it never lets up on the shocks and scary moments. Nothing is wasted on long descriptions and while the ‘romance’ and text messages are a bit meh and bleh, they are teenagers after all, so are not likely to proofread their texts, looking for grammatical errors (like me)!

The story is very simple really. Six teenagers decide to visit the scene of a horrific crime – Rayner High School now in ruins – and see what happens when you try to conjure up spirits using a Ouija board. That’s just asking for trouble and moaning minnie Lara never misses an opportunity to make her feelings known. Perhaps they should all have taken her more seriously. Jon is the leader, Ben is Lara’s boyfriend, Caley is her best friend and twins Simon and Sophie are there for the ride. And some ride it turns out to be. More terrifying than Nemesis at Alton Towers (says someone who finds the teapot ride scary), it will have you closing your eyes and holding your breath.

It has everything a teen spookfest needs from shock and horror to suspense and a body count of, well, loads. Read alone in the dark for added scariness. Recommended for reading ages 13 to 18 years.

Many thanks to @zooloo2008 for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the Author

Zoé O’Farrell grew up in Watford but left the town life to live by the sea down at the White Cliffs of Dover. She spends her days working with numbers before escaping in the evening to the world of words and movies. Her go-to relaxation is watching a scary movie or reading a terrifying book!

She is a book blogger and tour organiser just to keep her extra busy. When she is not reading or writing, you can usually find her watching Watford FC or at a gig. Failing that she can be found rolling her eyes at her husband as he acts the same age as her spitfire of a Mini-Me whilst separating her two cats. Ouija is her debut novel.