The Girl in the Locked Room by Mary Downing Hahn is a middle grade story about twelve-year-old, Jules Aldridge, and a little girl’s ghost trapped in a room.

I noticed the parallel between the two young girls right away in how lonely they both were in different ways. The girl’s ghost had been in a locked room for over a century, and Jules’ family moved around a lot because of her father’s, Ron, job restoring historic houses. 

The tension between Jules and her father was clear from the beginning at how fed up Jules was about living like a nomad – changing schools, constantly making new friends, falling behind in school, etc. Having changed schools a lot when I was a kid myself, my heart went out to Jules so it was nice to see how mom tried to get Ron to understand how Jules felt.

Unfortunately, Jules’ dad just couldn’t fathom the concept of putting down roots somewhere since he loved traveling and seeing the world so much. While I could see dad’s view, I still felt how Ron’s inability to acknowledge his own daughter’s unhappiness definitely had his character coming across as selfish to me.

And though mom did try to support Jules’ desire to settle down, mom (and dad – no surprise there) only dismissed the paranormal things that Jules saw. However, their nonchalant reactions to the strange things Jules was experiencing made more sense to me later but, at the same time, I did end up feeling worse for Jules where her parents were concerned.

But, then again, ghost stories are creepier when the main character feels alone, and I thought Hahn did a great job of setting up that isolated feeling with Jules. However, I do also feel it’s worth noting this ghost story did come across as quite subtle in the creepy department to me, but I also thought it was definitely appropriate for its middle grade audience.

One of the reasons I felt the creepy factor was subtle was because Jules’ fear of the ghost in the locked room did fade into more of a curiosity and then desire to help the ghost, who was troubled by her own long-dead past. I loved how Jules’ and the ghost’s dynamic morphed and how what I thought would happen between them was nothing like how I thought it would go. I also enjoyed wondering if the real life little girl Jules met, Maisie Sullivan, would turn out to be a good friend to Jules or not.

Though the creepy factor was pretty mild for me, which I figured it would be since it was a middle grade story, I still very much loved reading this book and smiled to myself at the end.