THE LAST RESORT, by Erin Entrada Kelly, Scholastic Press, Sept. 2, 2025, Hardcover, $17.99 (ages 8-12)
A girl discovers she has the unenviable power to see and talk to ghosts in The Last Resort, a middle-grade novel by Erin Entrada Kelly.
Twelve-year-old Lila has two goals for the summer:
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- Win back the friends who ditched her for being “too dramatic”
- Stop being so dramatic
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But then Lila’s estranged Grandpa Clem dies, throwing a wrench in her plans. Now she’ll have to spend the summer in Ohio while her parents decide what to do with Grandpa Clem’s creepy Victorian Inn. It’s supremely unfair. How can she show off the “new and improved” Lila from so far away?
Even worse, strange things keep happening. En route to Ohio, the family gets into a scary car accident. No one’s hurt, but the remainder of the trip is… odd. At every rest stop, Lila sees people in weird old-fashioned clothes. People no one else can see or hear…
Lila convinces herself it’s just her overactive imagination until the day of the funeral when she spots an old man sitting in her grandfather’s favorite chair. She does a double take — it’s him, Grandpa Clem. He tells Lila that he didn’t die of a heart attack: he was murdered. Possibly by someone who wants to control the inn. Because it’s not a normal bed & breakfast: it’s a portal between the land of the living and the realm of the dead. A hotel for ghosts passing onto the afterlife.
With the help of her skeptical brother, Caleb, and their new ghost-obsessed neighbor, Teddy, Lila — the girl who’s vowed to be less dramatic — must uncover her grandfather’s killer AND stop the evil spirits desperate to make their way back into the human world. —Synopsis provided by Scholastic Press
Lila has a flair for the dramatic, so it comes as no surprise when her family thinks she’s overreacting to the strange happenings at her grandfather’s old inn. In fact, the responses to Lila’s “behavior” have her fixated on fixing it. That’s the Lila readers first meet. She’s a little much. But readers get to know a more nuanced, thoughtful character as The Last Resort progresses. And Lila is surrounded by a small, but strong, supporting cast that really buoy her up.
The Last Resort is a ghost story with lots of twists and spooky elements, but never delves too deeply into what I would classify as scary. It has a real 1980s, Wait till Helen Comes vibe that works really well with author Erin Entrada Kelly’s tone and structure.
The book does feature some sort of interactive element where “ghosts from the story will emerge from the pages of the book, allowing readers to talk to spirits from the past and help solve the mystery.” This is done via QR codes or typing in a short URL. This wasn’t available in my advanced reader copy, and I honestly don’t know how many kids would stop reading to do it. It certainly doesn’t hurt, but I’m not sure it’s needed in the first place.
With themes of family, friendship and the afterlife, The Last Resort is perfect for tweens, particularly those entering fifth or sixth grade..
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