Elle is back and this time she is a teenager with a crush on her brother Charlie’s friend, Luke. She has left the spirit world behind, and not heard from Edward for the last few years. Although she misses Edward, after the events in the last book she is glad that the spirits haven’t tried to reach her.

Whilst enjoying a ride on the ghost train with Luke, the fake ghosts soon turn into reality telling Ellie they need her help, but she really doesn’t want to help them anymore.

It would seem though that the spirits have more of a hold on Ellie than she knew possible, as she is transported back to the 1930’s, before WWII breaks out. Devious spirits are trying to stop the war, you might think that this is a good idea, but it would change the world as we know it. It’s up to Ellie to make sure that war still happens or our time will be changed forever. Will Ellie succeed or is our world doomed?

‘High Spirits’ is the fourth book in the Childish Spirits series feature Ellie, a young girl living with her mum and brother Charlie. Her mum and dad separated and now her dad is living in their old home whilst they are living in a not-so-nice hotel.

At the start of the series we met a young Ellie meeting cheeky spirit Edward. Over the course of the next two books the two had to pull together if they were to save themselves, and the world from what lies beyond.

This time Edward didn’t feature as much as he did in the other books, which was a shame as I like naughty Edward. I agree entirely with the author that meddling in the past can only turn out badly and cause devastation on today’s society.

The book is a fun Children’s/YA novel, though it is a straight forward story of courage and doing the right thing, mixed in with the paranormal. There are no love scenes, or much in the way of action. What you get is a good, clean story with a great plot.

You do need to read the other books in the series to understand what is happening in this one. The author has also left us dangling this time with its cliff-hanger of an ending. This sets up the last book in the series, ‘The coming of the Spirits’ perfectly.

About the Author

Rob was born in Wirral, Merseyside. Because he was a wheelchair user, the authorities placed him in a special school, aged three. Rob, however, had other ideas. Over the next twenty years he worked his way up to mainstream schooling, college and then university, gained a degree in Law and qualified as a barrister before working for several years in the third sector, including a stint in children’s and family services. He has also worked as a volunteer classroom assistant helping young people with reading and I.T.

Writing his first story aged seven, his first short play aged eleven and first being published at fifteen, Rob wrote for several magazines before his first book for children, The Alien in the Garage and Other Stories, was published in 2011. He has since written two more collections of children’s stories, one of which, The Dinner Club and Other Stories, was longlisted for the International Rubery Book Award.

He has now published the first four novels in his Spirits series for children, the first of which, Childish Spirits, gained him a Distinction for his MA in Creative Writing before being longlisted for the Bath Children’s Novel Award and nominated for the People’s Book Prize in 2015.

Rob also has BBC writing experience with Chain Gang and Newsjack for Radio 4 Extra. He has recently studied Screenwriting and Filmmaking. His books have been used in schools, libraries and at literary festivals and he is in demand for his author workshops, which one teacher even described as “inspirational”!

You can find out more about Rob in his interview – ‘The Writing Life of: Rob Keeley‘