This book takes place as soon as the previous one ends. They have two weeks of summer left before 8th grade.
Plot:
This book is seriously so lame.
Dawn is obsessed with her old house, and she thinks there is a secret passage in it somewhere. She invites the club over and they search for one, and they end up sneaking around and scaring each other. They don't find one that day.
Then one day Dawn is reading in the barn and she falls through a hole in the floor. She is in a secret passage, which she follows and it leads to a door in her room. She finds a few things in the passage, and decides not to tell anyone.
Basically the rest of the book is her telling people about it, and then taking that person into the passage and they end up finding something that wasn't there before. Then Dawn reads an old book and decides the book was written about her house and it is proof that it is haunted.
Blah blah blah...some more people, some more scaring....then Dawn discovers that Nicky Pike has found the passage and he is the one who has been going in there. Dawn tells the club about it, they have a slumber party and they all sneak around and scare each other again.
Takeaways:
It took me forever to get through this book, and it took me even longer to work up the interest to write about it. Dawn is such a moron in this book. On the night she tells Jeff about the passage and they go through it, she seriously gets so freaked out she calls her mom home from a date. If I were Dawn's mom, I would tell her that she has no right to babysit children if she is scared of a fucking ghost.
They mention in this book a couple different times that Mallory is so amazing and she is probably going to make a great babysitter someday. Now, I get this is foreshadowing and all, and Mallory does end up being a baby-sitter, but now as an adult I am like...Mallory is 11. That is one year older than my nephew, and that kid can barely take care of himself, let alone babysit other humans.
At the end of the book the girls are talking about how they only have a few days left before school starts and they want to do all these things...bike ride, picnic, etc...but one of the items is "have a massive gossip fest"...who are they gossiping about? Each other? The kids they babysit?
Best character:
I'm going to go with Mallory, since she convinces her parents she is old enough to babysit even though she is barely out of diapers. Also, whenever she is babysitting her siblings with Dawn, Dawn is too obsessed with the secret passage to really babysit so Mallory has to do everything.
Worst character:
Obvi, I am not a huge fan of Dawn in this book. Also, her mother goes on a date and takes him to her PARENTS' house - which is where Dawn calls her and tells her to come home because you know - ghosts. So Dawn and her mom both share the worst character award for this book.
