If you like your spooky stories to feel like a fairy tale daydream set inside a nightmare, The Ghosts of Bitterfly Bay by Mary Averling is the read you didn’t know you needed. It brings dreamy, summery vibes set at a haunted cabin in the woods with a strange door. It’s equal parts magical and haunting, filled with friendships and fears, truths and secrets, and asks the question: What could be scary enough to scare a ghost?
Maudie isn’t your ordinary twelve-year-old. She’s the ghost of one – the ghost tasked with haunting Mayflower Cottage along with her best friend Kit and her little brother Scratch. It’s their job to scare away the visiting vacationers, and even though they have a strict set of rules for haunting, that doesn’t mean they don’t have fun with it. They love playing pranks on the living and challenging each other to see who can scare the humans first.
But the current set of visitors, a girl named Gianna and her family, seem trickier to scare. They’re not intimidated by the usual haunts and pranks, and Gianna enjoys reading about ghosts, spells, and other supernatural things. But Maudie and Scratch have scares of their own in the form of Longfingers, a creature who looms in both of their nightmares. After creeping around a mysterious abandoned cabin, Kit and Scratch go missing, and Maudie asks Gianna to help her find them.
A ghost must team up with the living girl she’s been haunting in order to defeat a monster out of her nightmares and save her little brother, from the author of The Curse of Eelgrass Bog.
Maudie isn’t your typical twelve-year-old girl—she’s the ghost of one. Along with her best friend Kit and little brother Scratch, she haunts a cottage in the woods, doing her best to scare off the vacationers and forget her old life.
But everything changes when Kit and Scratch go missing. Maudie knows something terrible must have happened, and she’s right: Longfingers—a monster from her own nightmares, with spidery fingers and needle-sharp teeth—has stolen her friends away.
Longfingers makes Maudie a twisted deal: find the key to a door in a mysterious cabin, or she’ll never see her friends again. With nobody else to turn to, Maudie has to beg for help from Gianna, the living girl she’s been haunting. Together, the girls search for a way to thwart the monster and save Maudie’s friends.
But Maudie’s keeping secrets about the cabin and her past. Unless she finds a way to finally face the truth, she may never be able to rescue her friends from Longfingers’s grasp.
The Ghosts of Bitterfly Bay
AUTHOR: Mary Averling
PUBLISHER: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
DATE: February 4, 2025
We won’t spoil the adventure that lies ahead, but trust us when we say it’s filled with magic, twists, and so much heart that you’ll wonder how you ever lived without this story. (The good thing is, you don’t have to! We’re giving away copies of both of Mary Averling’s enchantingly eerie reads HERE!)
You wouldn’t think a ghost would have rules when it comes to haunting, right? It’s kind of surprising, but thankfully Maudie is here (with the help of Mary Averling) to enlighten us about her big three rules when it comes to haunting and a peek into the spooky story that lies between the pages of The Ghosts of Bitterfly Bay.
Maudie’s Big Three Rules About Haunting:
MAUDIE: Here’s the thing. I love ghost stories, but they get so much wrong about what it’s like to ACTUALLY be a ghost. For starters, it’s always living people who get to tell the tale. They don’t understand the half of it! They only see what us ghosts want them to see, which means they miss all the planning, preparation, and showmanship that goes into a good haunting.
(Right. FYI, I’m a ghost. Probably should’ve started with that.)
Point is, haunting is more than slammed doors and broken mirrors. And ghosts are much more than brainless spirits wailing in the night. That’s why I wanted to share my big three rules about haunting:
#1: NO HAUNTING ANYONE EXCEPT YOUR TARGET:
There are three ghosts at Mayflower Cottage (which is where I live). My friend Kit, in particular, can be a real piece of work! That’s why it’s important for ghosts to embrace their own personal haunting styles–and stay out of other ghosts’ ways! If haunting was a total free-for-all, with everyone haunting everyone living who came to stay at Mayflower Cottage, things could get messy real fast. I mean, most tricks only work once. Nobody wants to see RUN written on their window three times in a row.
If we each pick a target and stick to haunting that person, one-on-one, it means we get to learn lots about what makes our target tick and be more creative with our haunting. (Secretly, sometimes, it means I can pretend my target is my friend. But don’t tell Kit about that part).
#2: NO HAUNTING OUTSIDE THE BOUNDARY OF MAYFLOWER COTTAGE:
Or, y’know, whichever house or graveyard or abandoned shopping mall you happen to be haunting! Otherwise there’s a big chance that somebody else might notice your shenanigans (see Rule #1).
Remember, the whole point of the haunting game is to create a good spooky story. If you’re trying to convince someone that they’re living in a haunted house, then it doesn’t make sense to keep haunting them when they leave! (Also, it would get exhausting. Even ghosts need breaks sometimes).
#3 NO HAUNTING THAT CAUSES EXTREME DISTRESS AND/OR HARM TO THE LIVING:
This is really, really important. Sure, we’re scaring people. Sure, some ghosts (cough cough Kit) do mean things, like putting flies inside old ladies’ toothpaste tubes. But we’re not trying to be those awful horror-movie monsters that give people permanent nightmares—not like Longfingers. A good haunting is fun for everyone!
You know the feeling of hearing a hair-raising campfire story at a sleepover, when the shadows get a little too real and every BUMP makes you jump? And it’s freaky, but also exciting? THAT’S what a ghost should aim for. We want to give vacationers something to remember, but above all, nobody should get hurt.
Anyway, that’s it from me! Happy haunting, ghosties!
🌿BOOK GIVEAWAY: Ready to read this terrifying tale? Enter for a chance to WIN copies of The Ghosts of Bitterfly Bay and The Curse of Eelgrass Bog!
