The Bewitching of Aveline Jones

Phil Hickes's The Bewitching of Aveline Jones is a shivery summer mystery for 9 year olds about a holiday cottage with an ancient stone circle at the bottom of the garden.

What happens

Aveline and her mum have rented a creaky old cottage in a tiny village called Norton Wick. Beyond the overgrown garden is a ring of thirteen huge stones called the Witch Stones. Ghosts and witches are Aveline's favourite subject, so she's thrilled.

Before she even reaches the stones, she digs up an old green bottle sealed with wax, with a blackish blob rattling inside. Something about it gives her the chills.

Then there's Hazel. She's funny, glamorous and rides a black horse, and she wants Aveline as a friend straight away. She can also make a silver dolphin necklace appear out of empty hands.

But Hazel vanishes whenever it suits her. She won't come into the cottage garden (she snatches her foot back as if she's trodden on a hot coal). And she's VERY keen for Aveline to smash that bottle.

It's a lovely slow creep of a book. Hazel's little presents from the stones feel like a game at first. Then she wants the bracelet Aveline's mum bought her left on a stone as payment, and grips her wrist when she tries to take it back. You really feel Aveline wobbling between wanting a friend and knowing something's off.

There's plenty of fun too. Her friend Harold answers the bookshop phone pretending to be a funeral home, and the village vicar wears a bowler hat and rainbow socks and throws grass about in the stone circle.

If you've got a reader who likes to be a bit scared but not TOO scared, this is spot on. The spooky moments in the opening chapters are mostly atmosphere, like a figure standing among the stones at dusk and a magpie that cackles like a witch.

What to read next

Aveline and Harold already know each other from an earlier adventure, so this isn't where her story begins. To start at the start, go back to The Haunting of Aveline Jones, where Aveline is packed off for a freezing half-term with her strict Aunt Lilian in a seaside town called Malmouth.