The Uninvited

The Uninvited

by Tim Wynne-Jones

2009

368 pages

Summary: After a bad break-up Mimi leaves her home in New York and heads north to Canada to her father’s old cabin to escape. The house is fairytale perfect, except for one thing, the strange young man named Jay currently living there. Jay thinks that Mimi is the one that has been leaving him strange trinkets and sneaking into his house, but Mimi has just arrived. With the two of them living there, the break-ins and strange incidents start to increase and Jay and Mimi will have to figure out who is behind it all before things get a lot more dangerous.

Review: The Uninvited is a very surprising read. There is a lot of suspense and the plot moves quite fast. While the entire story is told in third person, the narration does split between Jay, Mimi and Cramer. Usually I am not a fan of that combo but I do believe that it worked well in this case. The author did an excellent job of making all the characters compelling while at the same time keeping enough distance between the audience and the characters to build up mystery and suspense. The family storyline interwoven between the characters was very well done and compelling. Overall, I thought the story was very creative and original.

You might enjoy The Uninvited if you like books with: third person storytelling, split narratives, suspense, fast paced plots.

Other books by Tim Wynne-Jones: The Boy in the Burning House, The Survival Game, A Thief in the House of Memory

If you liked The Uninvited you might also enjoy: If the Witness Lied by Caroline Cooney, The Last Thing I Remember by Andrew Klavan, Liar by Justine Larbalestier

Author Website found here.

Additional Info: was short listed for the Governor General’s Award for Children’s Fiction

Rating: W 4/4 C 4/4 P 4/4 O 4/4 PP 3/4 CR 2/4
Grade: S