Gina's First Review

Deep and Dark and Dangerous
Reviewed by Gina MacDonald

While I was reading the novel Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn i got the chills a lot because it was such a great mystery.

The book Deep and Dark and Dangerous was written in Maine at a lake called Sycamore Lake. This book by Hahn was one of the best book’s i’ve ever read.

The characters in the story are Ali, the main character who is telling the story; Emma, Ali’s little cousin, and Dulcie’s daughter; Dulcie, Ali’s aunt and Emma’s mother; Claire, Ali’s mother; Sissy/Teresa, the ghost that they all thought was a real person until towards the end of the story. Those are all of the characters except for a few characters who were only mentioned once or twice along the story.

The story Deep and Dark and Dangerous starts off when Ali finds an old photograph from the box of books that her mom gave her. The people in the photograph that Ali found were her mom, Claire, and her aunt, Dulcie. There is one more person in the photograph that got teared out of the picture. Ali was curious and thought the name could be on the back of the photograph, the back said “Claire, Dulcie and T” the rest of the name was cut off. Ali asked her mom if she knew anything about the girl named “T” and she said she didn’t she wasn’t the same for a while after that day. The background of that photo was the lake that Ali’s mom Claire, and Dulcie visited every summer when they were kids, it was a lake called Sycamore Lake in Maine. After Ali had already upset her mom enough. Dulcie came over with her daughter Emma for a few days. She said she wanted Ali to babysit Emma for the whole summer. Claire wasn’t happy with that decision that she made letting Ali go for the whole summer but she did. When they arrived at Sycamore Lake in the beginning of the summer, all fine until Sissy started coming to the lake. Sissy was mean and horrible to Ali and nice to Emma. Sissy had a secret she was hiding that she wouldn’t tell. Ali thought it might have had something to do with the old photograph she found in the beginning of the story. After half the summer was nearly over, Sissy started to get meaner and meaner, and she always wore the same clothes everyday, a pink faded bathing-suit. She was rude and not polite. She never knocked before entering the house, nor did she care.

Dulcie went to go painting and she let out a big yelp, Emma and Ali rushed to the door and her painting room was all destroyed and on one of the paintings, in black paint and very large letters, it read “I’M WATCHING YOU, TELL THE TRUTH OR ELSE.” (page 80) A little while after that, Sissy kept coming over and kept annoying Ali and Emma. Dulcie and Emma headed off to the clinic because Emma had a fever, and Ali stayed home. Sissy showed up she was upset that Dulcie threw away her doll named “Edith” Ali thought of following Sissy when she left so she could tell her mom what she has been doing this whole summer, so Ali followed her until she could no longer see her because of the fog. Ali came across a graveyard, she noticed the red sweatshirt that she gave sissy to wear on a gravestone. Ali walked over to the gravestone and it said “In Memory of Our Beloved Daughter and Sister Teresa Abbott, March 11 1967 to July 19 1977, May her soul rise from the deep and be at peace.” Ali kept thinking of the name Teresa, and the story of how she drowned.... Ali thought that Sissy was playing a trick on her. Ali came across a house and knocked on the door, nobody named Sissy lived in the house. She started talking to the lady, the lady said her name was Ms. Trent. They started talking about Teresa and what happened and then after a while Ms. Trent got a phone call from Dulcie saying that Emma is missing and it is all Ali’s fault because she wasn’t there to watch her. Ali was frustrated, she ran out the door of Ms. Trent’s house, she kept running she came across the lake with a canoe. Emma was getting forced into the canoe by Sissy. Ali jumped in the canoe because she knew not to leave Emma alone again, Sissy paddled away from shore until nobody could see anything. Sissy was teasing Emma with the doll Edith, until she threw it into the water, Emma dove in after the doll. Ali was horrified. Ali saved Emma while hanging onto the canoe for dear life. Sissy disappeared with the doll Edith. Ali and Emma were suffering in the cold deep water. They spotted a boat flying by and they screamed “HELP” The man drove up to them in his boat and hauled them up. He had mentioned about how the search crew, police officers and everybody was looking for them. When they got back to the dock Dulcie glanced at Ali and told her she needed some explaining to do. Ali and Emma both suffered minor hypothermia, and Emma still had a fever. After Ali had explained to Dulcie was happened, she kind of got a little less tense. Sissy didn’t come back for a while after that day, until one day she walked up to the door and was talking to Ali while Emma was taking a nap. Ali kind of already knew she was a ghost.

Ali wanted to know the whole ghost story about what happened to sissy. Sissy told her the story, the story was- Sissy went out in a canoe and had Edith, Claires doll with her, she wanted to tease her with it and so did Dulcie, they were both very mean to Claire when they were kids. They went out deep into the water until they could no longer see anything at all, Dulcie and Teresa(Sissy) were playing pass with Claire’s doll Edith. Claire started crying and crying hoping that she could get her doll back. Dulcie got sick of the whole teasing thing so she threw the doll into the water thinking nobody would care. But sissy cared and she jumped after it, and drowned.-

I loved this book so much, i wish i could read it over and over again. I suggest to anyone to read this wonderful book by Mary Downing Hahn. This book has very well thought out parts in it. The only books that Mary writes are usually ghost stories, and the ghost stories are very good!