This book switched from the perspectives of Wyatt, a boy who just lost his best friend and moved to this town called Catskill, and Rachel, a girl who has never known anyone besides a woman she calls Mama, though she knows that she isn't her real mother. She has lived locked up in a tower in the woods of Catskill since she was very young.
Wyatt moves in with the mother of a friend of her mom's, Mrs. Greenwood, whose daughter disappeared eighteen years ago, and was presumed dead. The first night, Wyatt finds the diary of this girl, and then comes face to face with her ghost, right before Greenwood comes in a scolds him for being in her daughter's room.
He reads the diary, and investigates her disappearance, and the strange singing he keeps on hearing, when no one else does. He discovers Rachel, hidden in the tower all other people thought was abandoned.
The two, of course, fall in love, and together find out a creepy secret about their town.
I didn't enjoy this book. Sure, I loved the mystery of Catskill, but other than that, I really didn't understand it. Even though we got backstories, some of the things in the story still seemed to have loose ends. I can't say much more on that, since I don't do spoilers (except to tease my friends :D )
Also, the romance didn't feel right. In Beastly, you could connect to the characters and fall in love with them. In this book, since Wyatt didn't meet Rachel until halfway through the book, so their relationship was sort of rushed. In general, the individual characters didn't get a lot of time to become relate-able and enjoyable.
If this, all by itself, were a mystery novel, it would be an amazing story. But in this case, it has to live up to the magic and familiarity of its fairytale, and being a romantic story. In the second case, I think Flinn has failed. In a general opinion, I believe she peaked when she wrote Beastly, and has struggled to live up to the hype it received ever since.
