Haunting Charlie by Wendy Wang

3.5 Hoots

When we first meet Charlie she is working and someone comes up to her asking for a little help. Charlie has the gift of being able to see and hear ghosts so this might not seem like a weird request for her to receive. Charlie is very honest with the person and let’s her know that sometimes she can be wrong. That little detail was what really endeared me to Charlie. Usually in books like this you don’t have a main character admit that they may interpret something wrong! It was very refreshing. So how did this seemingly humble character end up investigating a possibly haunted home? And how was it connected to a string of missing women?

Well, to answer the first question is that she has a delightful cousin who kind of volunteered her to try and get to the bottom of what was happening at a local mansion. Her cousin promised that they would do this together but then she had an emergency (one of her clients died their hair orange) and of course couldn’t be there with Charlie when she met Susan. Charlie clearly saw that Susan was afraid so she made up her mind to help her. Unfortunately, Susan has a son who doesn’t believe in psychics and makes it his mission to prove Charlie is a fraud. This opens up the story to go in a much different direction because not only is he a non-believer, his is also a cop…….see, things are starting to connect. While on the property she say the ghost of one of Susan’s ancestors and he was not the friendly ghost variety. That is really when the story picks up.

While sleeping Charlie has a dream where she sees a teenage girl walking around a convenience store. The dream takes a dark turn when one of the men working there starts to follow the girls and that creepy ghost is talking to him. When she leaves he follows her out and Charlie cant fight the feeling that something bad was about to happen to that girl. When she wakes up she decides that she will go to Susan’s son with this information but of course he dismisses what she has to say.

Overall the book was interesting. I enjoyed the Charlie was written and the fact that the cop was not readily willing to believe her. The way Wang wrote the story really reminded me of an episode of “Ghost Whisperer” which was good, but at the same time I feel like some parts were really rushed. The pacing at times was just a little off for me. The ending did feel super rushed but the story was still interesting. There were plenty of twists ad turns to keep you reading but I don’t necessarily feel like there was enough to make me want to read the second book.