It’s no secret that Ms. Schwab is one of my absolute favorite authors. One thing that I’m super jealous about is her ability to pivot her mindset to better address her audience. It’s practically a superpower.
Bridge of Souls is the third book in the Cassidy Blake series about young Cassidy Blake, her ghostly best friend Jacob, and the scary situations the two of them get into as a result of Cass’ parents being on-air ghost investigators.
This particular tome takes us to the famously haunted city of New Orleans, and starts to address a bit of the insanity that happened to Cassidy in Paris at the end of Tunnel of Bones.
I really really want to delve into the story elements of this book, but it gets very spoilery very fast, and that’s just unfair to anyone totally engrossed in this series. This series is aimed towards eight to twelve year-olds, so I was super surprised that Ms. Schwab chose to tackle the LaLurie Mansion (look it up, it’s a total shocker), but did so very deftly.
Again, not getting too spoilery, the second half of this quick read gets very emotional very quickly. I would say that I was surprised that “kid lit” almost brought me to tears, but I’m very familiar with Ms. Schwab’s body of work, and her masterful skill at building up emotion. It’s masterful.
At the end of the day, one of the best things about Bridge of Souls as well as all of the Cassidy Blake books is that this is reading material you can definitely read along with your kids. I find it incredibly smart and engaging for all ages, and there is never any point in which the plot or situations are dumbed down — a trend I despise — to avoid “hard questions.” Hell, this entire series is basically about death and dying.
Read this book, and read the entire series. They go rather quickly, but are an absolute delight. Ms. Schwab has said that this may be the last in the series for a while, and I can understand that with her busy docket of current work, but I really hope that she revisits these characters some day. They are absolutely delightful.