Moody Jewish-American teenager Jenny Gluckstein is unimpressed when her mother Sally marries Evan, an Englishman with two sons who promptly transplants the whole family to a delipidated manor house in the depths of Dorset, England. Stourhead Farm, three hundred years old, is an absolute wreck that Evan has been hired to restore. Between the house, the stepfather, and leaving everyone and everything she's ever known, Jenny swears never to accept either her new home or her new family.
But hidden in the depths of Stourhead Farm is a room that doesn't correspond to any spot in the blueprints. There, Jenny meets Tamsin Willoughby, the ghost of the original owner's daughter, who introduces Jenny to the strange, supernatural residents that still live on the farm's vast estate. As she grows to know and love Tamsin, Jenny realizes that there is another, malevolent ghost at Stourhead Farm, one who wants to possess and consume Tamsin's spirit. To save her, Jenny must explore the region's troubled history to uncover the terrible secret of the night Tamsin died, and the curse that has kept her bound to the manor for the past three centuries.
This novel contains examples of:
- Aloof Big Brother: Tony is this by nature. He spends most of his time apart from the family, absorbed in his dance training, and Jenny is a little intimidated by his intensity and his sharpness. He's not cruel or unkind, but he has little tolerance for family drama and he's not shy about kicking people out of his space when he's tired of them.
- Big Rotten Apple: Jenny loves New York City, warts and all, even when her descriptions of the city reveal that it's pretty sordid and dangerous.
- Blended Family Drama: In fairness, Jenny is the cause of most of the drama; the rest of the family gets along quite well and are even pretty understanding that Jenny's life has just been uprooted. The book shows how Jenny slowly makes connections with her new stepbrothers and stepfather.
- Brother–Sister Incest: The first time Jenny sees her handsome older stepbrother Tony, Jenny can't help but wonder if it counts as incest if it's your stepbrother. She's pretty embarrassed for thinking it, and it's about as far as the story goes in that direction.
- Brother–Sister Team: Much to Jenny's surprise, her younger stepbrother Julian becomes an asset and assistant when Jenny begins to investigate the farm's mysteries.
- Calling Parents by Their Name: Jenny calls her parents Norris and Sally. When her mother remarries she calls her new step-dad Evan.
- Cats Are Magic: Mister Cat is the one who finds the ghosts in the first place, and leads Jenny to them.
- City Mouse: Jenny (and to a lesser extend, her mother Sally) are city mice from New York City, suddenly dropped into the peaceful, isolated region of Dorset, England. Sally tries to embrace it, only to be overwhelmed; Jenny doesn't even bother trying.
- Continuity Nod: Ghosts in Tamsin are stated to endure as long as they remember their lives and fade away slowly as their memory disappears. This is exactly how ghosts work in Beagle's first novel A Fine and Private Place.
- Cool Kid-and-Loser Friendship:
- Jenny's perception of her friendship with Meena, who is beautiful, popular, and academically gifted. Jenny believes that plain, awkward girls like her don't have friends that look like Meena, which Meena counters by saying how much she admires Jenny's independent spirit.
- Jenny also feels this way about Tamsin, believing that a 300-year-old ghost of a beautiful, romantic figure should have found someone more worthy. Like Meena, Tamsin thoroughly rebukes this attitude when she finds out about it.
- Dying Curse: Tamsin's last words were a curse against her sweetheart Edric, whom she believed had abandoned her.
- Empathic Environment overlapping with Hostile Weather: Since the storms carry The Wild Hunt, this is somewhat inevitable.
- Fantastic Drug: Jenny and her New York friends smoke "boom," which appears to be analogic to marijuana. They refer to its effects as "getting boosted" or "lifted." (Jenny remarks that her mother refuses to say the name "boom," though the book makes it seem more like the author wants to avoid mentioning a real-life street drug.)
- Follow the White Rabbit: Mister Cat leads Jenny to the secret room where they find the ghosts of Tamsin and Miss Sophia Brown.
- Formally-Named Pet: A cat simply named Mister Cat, and another named Miss Sophia Brown.
- Ghost Amnesia: Tamsin appears to others as she remembers herself. Sometimes she remembers herself very well, right down to her crooked teeth; other times she has gaping holes in her body because she can barely remember anything. The driving force of the plot is finding out what the so-called Other One had to do with her death — which Tamsin herself has forgotten because she was so terrified of him.
- Ghostly Chill: It's hard to tell the actual cold spots from the fact that the house is 300 years old, unheated, and has stone floors, but a particular area is nicknamed "the Artic Circle" and can't be heated, no matter what the family does.
- Hanging Judge: Judge Jeffreys. "Hanging Judge Jeffreys" was in fact his real-life, historical moniker, and both in real life and in the novel, he had a reputation for condemning people to death regardless of their level of involvement in the Monmouth Rebellion.
- Historical Domain Character: Judge Jeffreys
. Jenny's description of his portrait is pretty accurate to his actual portrait, and his dire reputation remains unchanged in the book. - New Transfer Student: Jenny is dropped into the middle of an English school, only to find her American education leaves her woefully inadequate academically. She also has trouble making inroads with the other girls, even though they're all nice to her, simply because as a day student, she doesn't get the full bonding experience of living in the dorms with them. (Jenny doesn't quite count as a Foreign Exchange Student since she's a permanent English resident, but there are shades of this, too.)
- Old, Dark House: When the family arrives, Stourhead Manor has been unoccupied and unmaintained for decades. The manor is a rambling edifice full of dark, hidden rooms that don't appear on the blueprints. Jenny mentions that as late as six years after moving in, they're still stumbling over new rooms.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: In this universe, ghosts endure for as long as they remember being alive and gradually disappear as they forget themselves.
- Prolonged Prologue: Much of the first part of the book is taken up with establishing the family on the farm and describing the various mundane issues they contend with. Tamsin, while mentioned in passing, doesn't get introduced until the second third of the book.
- Secondary Character Title: While much of the book's mystery revolves around Tamsin, Jenny is the narrator and main character.
- Spell My Name with a "The": The Billy Blind. Not a Billy Blind, but The Billy Blind. He gets shirty when you don't use the "the."
- Teacher/Student Romance: Examined. Back in New York, Jenny is conflicted over the interest of her handsome teacher, who has a habit of non-sexual contact and overly fond compliments. She feels uncomfortable, but at the same time, all the other girls have a crush on him and she feels she should be more flattered by his attention, particularly since she isn't getting it from the boys her own age. Nothing ever comes of it, but she mentions her discomfort for the rest of the book. Meena tells her she should have reported him.
- Troubled Teen: Jenny's life's already a mess back in New York, where she's unpopular, temperamental, and already hanging out with some equally troubled friends who give her bad advice and use drugs with her. When she gets to England, where she doesn't even have that support network, she gets worse.
- Uptight Loves Wild: Meena admires Jenny's independent spirit and outspokenness, contrasting it with her own overly strict parents who govern every aspect of her life.
- The Wild Hunt: Appears, and the question of what — or who — it is hunting is key to the plot.
