Wren

Lucy Hope's Wren is a dark, windswept mystery for 11 year olds about a girl whose house has started to sing.

What happens

Wren is twelve and lives in a strange old house on Anglesey, looking out over the fierce currents of the Menai Strait. She paddles about in a little round coracle, sketches birds and dreams about flying. The first time she hears the house sing, she runs all the way up to the roof in the dark to find out where it's coming from.

Nobody believes her. Especially not Pa, who thinks she's far too much like her mother.

And Pa has plans. He's signed Wren up for a much-feared institution for girls whose fathers can't control them, starting just before Christmas. All because she'd rather be out on the water than doing her embroidery!

It's a very gothic read (in the best way). Rumbling floors, cracks that appear in the walls, a corridor that feels like the inside of a body. Aunty Efa zooms about in a steam-powered wheelchair with smoke pouring out behind her (her hairdos are a work of art too). There's a quiet boy called Medwyn who stokes the furnace and can make gulls do what he says.

Wren is brilliant company. Stubborn, brave and funny about the grown-ups. You really feel how trapped she is and how hard she's fighting not to be.

There are a few things to be aware of first. Wren's mother died in a flying accident two years before the story starts, and Pa says some really cruel things about her. There are rumours of beatings at the institution. After a man humiliates her in front of a church full of people, Wren runs into the freezing sea because she's so upset (she comes to her senses and gets out).

A reader who's recently lost someone, or who finds unkind parents hard to read about, might want to go carefully. If yours loves a spooky setting and a heroine who refuses to be tamed, they'll be hooked.

What to read next

If they're after more of that dark, old-house feeling, Lucy Hope's Fledgling is a good one to try. Cassie lives in a tall house on a rock full of stuffed owls, and something tiny with four wings blows in through her window in a storm.