Portraits of Celina by Sue Whiting

“… but it seemed that the troubles of the past had strangely brought us a little closer together…”

Portraits of Celina by Sue Whiting tells the story of a broken family who move into an abandoned haunted house. The house had belonged to past members of their family, and had been the site where Celina, Bayley’s second cousin, had died. Bayley shares a striking resemblance to Celina. When Bayley starts to have visions of Celina’s old life, she thinks she is going crazy. Celina seeks revenge and Bayley must be the one to avenge her.

I am absolutely mesmerized by this book. It was so interesting and it had both cute teen romance and brooding mysteries. Full of plot twists, I could not put the book down. The result? Two hours later, and a finished book to write about. It is listed as part of the Premier’s Reading Challenge for years 7-9. But I think it may be interesting to even older grades.

I think it had a lot of important messages. Especially about the duplicity of the individual. We are all different in front of different people. This means we can never know everything about anyone – we can only see what we chose to see. This is exactly what Celina embodied. Her friends saw her as someone completely different to whom ‘Bud’ saw and who Bailey got to meet. Even the grandfather, he was not crazy or mute, he was someone hiding a deep secret. Actually, one thing I wanted to mention is what the grandfather did. I know that the motive of keeping your children in the right path would be strong and drive anyone to any depths but killing someone? It was a bit extreme, especially since his son never recovered from Celina’s death. He definitely had to have some sort of mental problems. But I guess this wasn’t the point of the story, we weren’t exploring his story but Bailey’s story and how she struggled through all the challenges life threw at her.

Another important message was that of family. I think it’s clear to see that family was very important to all characters in this book. I thought it very heart-warming that Amelia was the one who ‘rescued’ Bayley. Sure, Oliver was there, but it was Amelia whom Bayley saw first. I think this shows that even with all the problems and arguments that families go through, that love is (almost) always present and the strongest force. I think it also showed that we are often so stuck dwelling in our own issues and blaming everyone around us that we don’t see what is really going with our family members. It’s important to take a step back and make sure that everyone is really okay. In this case, I think Bayley was often overlooked – the mother wanted to see Bayley as the strong force, holding the family together, and forgot that Bayley was only a child and working through her own issues. But even Bayley was no saint, she never realised that Amelia’s problem may have been her response to a traumatic issue. She was always angry at her mother also, and never really gave her mother a chance.

Portraits of Celina is a bit cute, a bit spooky, a little mysterious and very compelling. It’s a detective, murder story for younger audiences. It’s a murder mysteries and ghost story without the blood and gore, which I personally hate anyway. I definitely recommend this book. It’s easy and quick to read, and will transport you into a world of fantasies.