A Book Review - Help Wanted by Richie Tankersley Cusick (Point Horror)

I liked this book a lot. It's quite different to the other Cusick books I've read - for one thing, Robin's mother isn't entirely absent, although we don't see her much - and there's more of a "normal" background than in books like Trick or Treat or Teacher's Pet. It is still a good read, though, with that creepy gothic feeling that Ms Cusick does so very well.

Robin, reserved and introverted class brain, applies for a job cataloguing books in a personal library. She's a little hesitant, because the job happens to be at Manorwood, a decaying gothic mansion that is home to Parker Swanson - the confident, arrogant hottie who just started at school - and his fragile blossom of a stepsister, Claudia. Worse, the books that are to be catalogued belong to Claudia's dead mother, a medium (and reported witch, or something that rhymes with it) who killed herself some months back.

Someone is trying to terrorise Claudia, and bleeding-heart that Robin is, she's determined to protect her, even when Robin herself starts seeing phantoms in the bathtub and getting threatening notes tacked to her door. Claudia thinks it's her mother, haunting her from beyond the grave. Robin thinks there's a more prosaic meaning. Parker just thinks Claudia's a fruit loop. What's the truth?

The truth, or at least my subjective version of the truth, is that this is a pretty good book. It's probably at the lower end of the 4-star area, rather than the higher end the way The Lifeguard was, but still deserves a 4-star rating IMO. Robin is an interesting heroine, although I'd have liked to delve a bit deeper into her character - but I don't really expect to be able to in a 200-odd page book. I like that she's bookish and quiet; I find the bookish quiet heroines hold my interest much more than the party-girl ones. Parker could have been a bit more drawn out; I don't feel like we got enough of him, and he had a whole lot of potential. Ditto for Walt. Claudia is the one who really steals the show - she's a beautifully-written, very convincing portrayal of a wounded-flower girl who isn't quite sure if she's sane or not.

The plot is nicely twisty, as most of Ms Cusick's stories are. Particularly young readers might find it hard to keep their attention on the book - while I started reading Point Horror at 8 or 9, I preferred Stine and Hoh and didn't really appreciate the subtlety of Cusick until I was 13 or 14.

The only thing I wasn't keen on with this book was the way Robin treated Parker. She really seemed to dislike him, and we were never given any concrete reason why. Oh, she thought he was arrogant, and he was, but he was always nice to her, and I'd have liked to see a couple of scenes that let them get closer together. Cusick writes her romantic - or sometimes just creature comfort - scenes in such a beautiful way that my heart feels all prickly during them, and I'd like to have seen more of them here.

Or maybe just more Parker. Parker was hot. I do have a thing for those arrogant-but-good-hearted blonds. :)

Verdict: Nice juxtaposition of the chilling and the comforting. A wonderfully twisted read.