Anyone who has read Edgar Allan Poe knows Kate Racculia’s latest book is going to be delightful. The opening of Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts is only three pages, but it captures the mysteries, loneliness and secrets that will unfold in the book.
with the opening. “Roderick Usher” buys the Tillerman house, the house in which an artist, Matilda Tillerman, once lived, and the one in which she shut herself off, burying herself in her house.

Six years after the book’s opening, readers meet Tuesday Mooney and the rest of the cast. Tuesday is a gifted researcher. She works at Boston General Hospital where she digs online for fundraising prospects. She’s a little standoffish, but so much of Tuesday’s nature can be credited to her past. She grew up in Salem. By sixteen, she had a best friend, Abigail Hobbes, and the two dove into the culture of exploring witchcraft, ouija boards, and dressing in black. When Abigail disappeared at sixteen, the police continued to look for her. Because Tuesday started hearing Abby’s voice in her head, she knew her best friend was dead. That’s when Tuesday was sent for help, after she broke down one day in school because kids claimed she talked to ghosts.

Tuesday’s life changes at the Auction for Hope, a charity event for the hospital. Vincent Pryce, an eccentric billionaire, collapses at the event, after bidding fifty thousand dollars on an item. It’s only a prelude to the crazy game invented by Pryce who invites the entire city of Boston to participate in a treasure hunt inspired by his idol, Edgar Allan Poe. There are rules to the game, and Tuesday and a few friends are clever enough to follow the clues and try to solve the dead man’s last puzzle.

There’s a little bit of everything in this novel. There’s a charming cast of misfits, needy people who are searching for answers to their own lives and problems. The story revolves around Tuesday, her friend, Dex, Dorey, a young girl who lost her mother in an accident, and the needy son of a missing billionaire. But, Tuesday is the link, just as she becomes an idol for some of those searching for Pryce’s treasure.  The book is a game, a treasure hunt, a mystery, a ghost story. It’s a book with possibilities of a follow-up. It’s about literature and pop culture, art and music, and finding out who you are. It’s a twisted story of heartache and loss. But, it has wonderful moments of triumph.

In the long run, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts is whatever the reader discovers in the book, about the story, the characters, or about themselves. It’s a riveting, charming book.

Kate Racculia’s website is www.kateracculia.com

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghost by Kate Racculia. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019. ISBN 9780358023937 (hardcover), 359p.

*****
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