Viola in Reel Life

Viola is 14 and is enrolling at a girl's boarding school. Her main talent and interest is in taking videos. When she gets to the school she sees a strange person who seems to vanish.

Later she meets her roommates and the story goes on to tell how she adjusts to her life at the school, her feelings about what she has left behind, and how she gradually becomes involved in school activities which involve her video talents.

She eventually finds out who it was that she say and goes on to make a short film about that person and what had happened to them.

The book, to me, is a little bit confusing as it seems that it wants to start off as some kind of supernatural mystery about the woman in red, but then goes on and on about Viola's normal school life, getting and losing a boyfriend, her former boy-friend, what her parents do, etc. Around the middle of the book the strange woman is brought up again, and then it's back to the more regular stuff until later in the book Viola becomes involved in making a short film about the woman that might be a ghost.

It doesn't work as a supernatural-type of mystery. If the main purpose of the book was simply to show how Viola adapted to life at the girl's academy, then it goes on too long for just that. Basically it was sort of disappointing.


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