A review by healingtothemax
Just South of Home by Karen Strong

3.0

Weighty subject matter requires group-adult reading and use of the book's provided reading guide. This is not a book to easily handoff without followup - it is a necessary book which leads to more awareness and discussion. Middle-grade target audience served by its initial subject matter - summertime spent navigating fraying friendships and tense family ties - gets thrown a loop by family secrets, ghosts and child murder. No mistake here - that scene, those revelations and the too quick wrap up of dealing with life-changing experiences is ungainly handled and tossed away without the consideration of its impact upon characters, story and readers (young and older). Evil arrives in ghostly and corporeal forms, big and little, young and older, soul-sucking and soul-wounding. I wish author Strong in her debut had more nuanced guidance by her editorial team to make a choice and stick with the lived-in story of a science "nerd" girl navigating family-friend demands, quarrels, hopes and heartaches or gone full-in on solving a dark family secret and healing community wounds in dealing with one ghost child and how the truth, be it difficult to face and hard to unearth, can truly set more than one soul free.