ALA Booklist

When Ariadne's family moves to a small community in Tennessee, she sorely misses her best friend from home and barely attempts to make friends in her new school. She becomes intrigued, though, with an odd girl named May, who wears old-fashioned clothes, doesn't attend school, and seems to appear almost magically when Ariadne is outdoors and feeling lonely or needy. After many clues, Ariadne deduces that May isn't just a loner, but a ghost. Younger readers may enjoy figuring out that May is a ghost before Ariadne is willing to admit it to herself, but older ones will probably feel impatient with Ariadne's slow acceptance of the inevitable. Otherwise, Ariadne makes a convincing character, wrapped up in her own problems at the beginning, but increasingly willing to extend herself to help others as the story progresses. The adventure scenes at the end of the book speed up the pace in a satisfying way and lead to a resounding conclusion. From the author of Anna of Byzantium (1999).

Horn Book

Ariadne unhappily moves to a small college town in Tennessee in seventh grade. She meets a sympathetic, but elusive, friend--one May Butler, who turns out to be a ghost from the late 1800s. Several familiar themes converge in this story of a vulnerable girl with contacts in another world and a ghost who wishes to return to where she belongs. The novel offers the diversion demanded by rainy days, long weekends, and summertime.

Kirkus Reviews

No way does Ariadne want to spend her seventh-grade year in a hick town in Tennessee just because her mom got a job at the university there. She's lonesome, missing her best friend back in Florida. When she meets a girl with a long braid and wearing a faded blue dress and brown boots alone in the woods, who says she lives where "it's cold in summer and warm in winter," Ariadne feels strangely drawn to her. Intrigued by the murky 100-foot-deep lake where her family lives, Adriadne's social-studies project on the creation of the lake and the dead town underneath it becomes the eddy that swirls the mysterious circumstances together. Is the girl, May Butler, a ghost? How can Ariadne take her home? Plenty of foreshadowing and obvious clues point to the answers, but it's not where the plot goes, rather how it gets there that makes the story compelling. A genuine ghost story without coincidental explanations that will draw readers eerily in. (Fiction. 10-14)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Barrett (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Anna of Byzantium) places a supernatural twist on a well-worn story line about an unwelcome move. Seventh-grader Ariadne, miserable at being uprooted from Florida when her professor mother gets a job in a small Tennessee college town, is daydreaming about running away when she encounters a silent girl in old-fashioned clothes. Eventually she and the girl, May Butler, become friends, but mysteries surface. Why does May so quickly appear and disappear? Why doesn't anyone else see May? Readers will outpace the heroine in her slow piecing together of May's identity (she is the ghost of a 19th-century local girl) and May's request, "You have to look for me and help me go home." Given May's benevolence (she appears to girls or boys needing help), the ghost story isn't especially frightening, and those familiar with the genre may find Barrett's clues too obvious to generate much momentum. Instead, the tension arises from Ariadne's investigation of the colorful local history and her attempt to carry out May's wishes. If somewhat tame, the story offers enough teasers to keep the audience going until the action-packed climax. Ages 10-14. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(May)

School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-Ariadne's family has just moved from Florida to tiny Dobbin, TN, and she hates it. She misses the ocean, her old school, and her best friend, Sarah. One day, after swimming in Cedar Point Lake, she meets an odd girl in old-fashioned clothing, whose name she later discovers is May. In the course of doing research for a class project on the history of her new town, Ariadne learns of a local legend concerning a child named May Butler who mysteriously disappeared one day in the 1850s, and she decides to discover the truth about the strange girl who drifts in and out of her life with no explanation. The story is rather predictable, and readers figure out what is going on long before Ariadne does. Also, some of the clues that lead her to solve the mystery fall into place a little too easily, with many of the supporting characters seeming to exist merely as vehicles for plot twists. The mutual concern that Ariadne and May have for one another, however, is affecting, and fans of ghost stories should enjoy this light, easy read.-Alison Ching, North Garland High School, Garland, TX Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.