The Night Train

With a quirky blend of history and the paranormal, Savaryn (The Edge of In Between) plumbs the depths of familial relationships and the lengths to which people will go to live their truth in this tender ghost story. All their lives, 12-year-old fraternal twins Maddie and Nat Maverick, who read as white, have done everything together, including wearing matching Halloween costumes, sharing secrets, and appearing on their family’s YouTube channel, Wrecked to Decked, where their parents upload videos of them flipping eerie dilapidated houses. The only thing they don’t share is a birthday—one twin was born on October 31, the other on November 1. When their nana dies, the girls discover a new commonality: they have each inherited Nana’s ability to communicate with ghosts. As their parents endeavor to renovate Signalman’s Cottage in the small town of Hush, residents prepare for the once-every-13-years reenactment of the train disaster that put them on the map, and Maddie and Nat attempt to navigate their newfound gifts to aid the ghosts of the decades-old wreck. While first-person narration by Maddie sometimes reads as too mature, her interactions with others, particularly Nat, ring true in this life-lesson-laden adventure-drama. Ages 8–12. (Aug.)

Correction: A previous version of this review misstated the author's first name.