A review by libraryjen
The Crossroads: A Haunted Mystery by Chris Grabenstein

2.0

This is a really hard book for me to rate. It's marketed toward middle grade (ages 9-12) and the main character is 10 years old, but there's some really heavy themes and the book gets pretty intense. The writing was, of course, fabulous, and the plot was twisty and fun, but overall the book was incredibly dark for a middle grade audience. Now, I'm definitely not one for dumbing things down for kids, but if you introduce a heavy theme in a children's book, you really do need to deal with it and explore it enough for the reader to have some kind of resolution. Without giving spoilers, the concept of mental illness and depression and the issue of child abuse (verbal, not psychical or sexual) are all brought up repeatedly, but never actually dealt with, in this book. That just didn't work for me, even though the mystery was fun.

I admit, I was a bit disappointed. I have loved everything else I've read by Grabenstein but this one just missed the mark.