Death at Morning House By Maureen Johnson.
This novel starts with the main character, Marlow, asking her crush, Akilah, on a date. When Akilah says yes.
After a successful date, Marlow invented Akilah for a house Marlow has been housesitting for a couple of days. Marlow lit a candle and started talking to Akilah. A couple of minutes later, Akilah starts to scream. The candle that Marlow brought exploded, and the house caught on fire! Sadly, the house burned to a crisp.
When Marlow gets home, her neighbor/history teacher, Mx. Gibson, sits at Marlow’s dinner table drinking apple tea. When talking to Mx. Gibson, they told Marlow about a job opportunity at Ralston Island touring the Ralston house. (back in 1932, there was this millionaire named Dr.Philip Ralston. On July 27, 1932, two of Dr. Ralston’s six kids died at the house, and nobody knows why) (Clara, age sixteen, and Max, age four)
Marlow takes the job opportunity, hops a cruise, and arrives at Ralston Island. She meets her new coworkers Van, April, Riki, and Tom when she arrives. After dinner, Riki is about to leave the dining room when she tells Marlow one important detail that April forgot to tell her: about a year ago, their friend Chis passed away, and now Marlow is taking his place.
The next day, everything was going great until a student from Yale University came in asking for Marlow’s boss. Marlow looked for Dr.Henson in her office, but she wasn’t there, so Marlow asked her coworkers. No one had seen Dr. Henson sensed the previous night, so they looked for a couple of hours with no luck. April called the cops, and the cops started investigating where Dr.Henson went.
The next morning, Riki invites Marlow to her room to show her something. When in Riki’s room, she shows Marlow some ancient bottles of alcohol she found in the floorboards, which has both Riki and Marlow questioning where the bottles came from since Dr. Phiilip Ralston disapproved of alcohol.
In this novel, a lot happened very quickly, which I wasn’t a fan of, and the candle explosion didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Another thing that didn’t make sense was that after a few chapters, there would be a chapter on what really happened at the Ralston house in 1932. I wish the author, Maureen Johnson, didn’t say anything about 1932 because she said what happened to Clara and Max before Marlow and her friends found out, which I wasn’t a fan of, but I still gave this novel a 7 out of 10.
