Even though I discovered Zilpha Keatley Snyder through the Egypt Game and The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Disaster, this might be one of my favorites. It's so hard to pick with Snyder. This one or A Fabulous Creature. I can't tell you how many times I've read each of her books. This is definitely the best Stanley book, though reading it as an adult has been interesting. For instance, David is a super mature eleven year old. I definitely didn't catch that when I was younger. I also forgot how genuinely *funny* this book is. Even as an adult I was laughing out loud.
Definitely recommended.

This was a so so read. This author writes about weird stuff. This book is about a newly blended family that moves into a new house. The dad and his children had lost their mother. The mom and her daughter come in to create a new step family. The daughter, Amanda, isn’t very accepting of the new situation and she convinces her new siblings to join her occult and have a seance. Strange things start happening in the house and she tells the kids that the house is haunted by an old ghost.

As time moves on, her new step-brother David, starts to wander if she is secretly behind all of the strange things happening in the house. He isn’t sure why she is doing it because it mostly hurts her own mother.

This is basically a story about blending a family with kids and how the kids react to their new living situation. The question is, do you think Amanda is doing all of it or is it really a ghost haunting them all?

If you are offended by witchcraft, ghosts, and the occult then this book isn’t for you.

I’m rating this book as I remember it in 5th or 6th grade.

⭐Rating ⭐
Five stars. I wish I had read this as a middle schooler.

Newbery Challenge 174/415. 3.5 stars, which translates to “pretty good”. This is a spooky middle grades book done well. One of the kids, Amanda, is a witchcraft, supernatural enthusiast. Her motivation is to annoy her mother and get attention...honestly, she’s a brat. But she has a good character arc in the story. There is a ghost story element that will leave the reader with a shiver at the end. A “pretty good” ghost story for middle schoolers.

Amanda was so insufferably annoying and bratty good LORD. Anyways this story follows a family of divorce that comes together through a marriage with a unique little girl named Amanda who’s a very unhappy child of divorce and is infatuated with the supernatural. Amanda has her new siblings go through different tests and what not to bring them apart of this supernatural relationship?.. anyways the Stanley kids were genuinely really fun to read about. David is such a GOOD big brother and the twins and Janie are just the most adventurous and fun kids who all get along and love to play games with their siblings

My favorite out of all Snyder’s books! I always get absorbed into the world of the Stanley kids no matter how many times I read it.

*SIGH* How disappointing.

I've seen this novel all over thrift store shelves and finally decided to give it a go because of how much I enjoyed Snyder's The Egypt Game. However, this book seems like a lot of unnecessary build-up that steers quite out of the way from what the title suggests, only to discard most of that in the end for some quick and sudden character development and--oh, yeah!--that headless cupid, remember??

The novel suddenly ties up all loose ends in the last two chapters with a small cliffhanger that hints to elements that evidently appear in the rest of the books in the Stanley Family series. The mysteries are mostly solved, the cupid gets his head back, and the Stanleys are one big, happy blended family. It all comes together well enough for an audience of children; but reading as an adult left me wanting more drama. At least in The Egypt Game there is a real child murder on the loose instead of a rock-throwing poltergeist that turns out not to exist at all.

We laughed out loud for the “ordeals”—this was such a well-written story and we loved how the ending left you with just enough magic to keep wondering. Excellent, excellent as an audio book!! We finished it in two days because no one wanted to stop!

0.5 stars.
I really didn't like this book. I only got to page 69 and it was so dead boring that I was almost falling asleep.

The main female chacter was sooo snotty. She thought that adults were despicable things that didn't even deserve to be called humans. She hated her mom with a passion and though that the main male caracter's dad was the devil himself. The main female was also super cruel to all animals and even worse to young children (she called them things). She hates everything but her best friend and her dad (and the only reason she likes her dad is because he showers her with money whenever she wants something and never tells her no). Both her and her friend decied that they were going to be witches and that all witches have to be awful hags and steal things.

All in all this was a super boring and completely dreadful book. I would never recommend this book to anyone I know because I wouldn't want anyone to be as depressed as I was during the first sixy-nine pages of this book.

Finished my book on the train to work and realized the battery on my Kindle was dead, so I grabbed a book form my classroom library I hadn't read in a while. I've been recommending this to all my kids asking for scary stories even though I hadn't read it since I was their age. It's still great, although I'm not sure that the kids looking for a scary book will be very satisfied. The only scary parts are close to the end. The characters are so well-written, though.

First off Amanda is the worst.

If I were the stepdad in the situation I would have some serious issues with that girl and how she was affecting my own children. If I were Amanda’s mom who I felt very sorry for I would let her go live with her dad.

Amanda is furious that she has to live with her mom and the Stanley’s. David, a delightful character, is the big bro who looks after Janie and the twins. He’s very patient with Amanda and how psychotic she is.

Amanda is obsessed with the occult. She gets all the Stanley kids to go through nine ordeals or challenges, so they too can practice the occult. All of the challenges are obviously meant to cause disruption in the family and irritate the parents.

How could the parents not see what was going on? My mom would’ve never allowed us to get away with such nonsense. I just don’t see how the parents can see something was seriously wrong.

It was an easy read and kept me entertained. I really enjoyed David‘s character and his little siblings. I read it in one sitting which is why I rounded up to four stars. Even though it’s probably closer to three stars for me.