It's not often I go for a ghost story, but something about the blurb of Mary Hades drew me in and I'm really glad it did! It's the story of a girl, Mary Hades, who sees ghosts. Her parents think it's a psychological problem and Mary pretends to take the medication her doctors give her, but she knows the ghosts she sees are real. All this is fine until Mary and her parents go on holiday to a caravan site haunted by a ghost who's recently stated to get a bit violent....
Mary Hades is written like a proper old-fashioned ghost story, in a kind of 'bad ghost versus protagonist whose job it is to defeat it' way. I thought it was a great story with likeable characters and a plot that kept me reading all the way through. There's a bit of romance, but it doesn't overwhelm the action. It's also kind of Scooby-Doo (in a good way): Mary has her gang of buddies and they set about trying to solve the mystery of why this ghost has been killing people. Spoiler alert: the ghost in Mary Hades didn't turn out to be the caretaker from the haunted amusement arcade.
9/10