The Raptures is a fantasy and mystery novel written with a conversational and moralistic tone. It tells the story of Hannah, an eleven-year-old girl who lives in a strict protestant family, during the Troubles. They live in a small village in Northern Ireland called Ballylack. Hannah is innocent, clever, and religious. She doesn’t have a lot of friends and her classmates laugh at her because her parents don’t allow her to go to the Raggedy Tree, a wishing tree in Millar’s Gap. Her classmates get a disease and die one after the other. They reappear to Hannah like ghosts and she is the only one who can see them. Why is she the only one who is healthy? And why can she talk to her dead classmates?

This novel allowed me to discover the landscapes of Ballylack and some Northern Irish slang words (craic, grand, wee…) of Northern Ireland, despite which it was easy to read. What I really liked about this book was the change in Hannah’s emotions: from joy to shock, sadness and fear of death. Also, I really liked the mystery around the death of her classmates, even if it was obvious to understand there was a link with the Raggedy Tree. We feel transported into a mysterious universe where the Dead Kids feel happy despite their loneliness. If you want to discover Northern Ireland from your home and follow the mystic adventures of a little girl, it’s the perfect book!