"I knew little place this old, this abandoned, should smell like must and moss and decay."

Author doesn't know how to spell musk the entire book and I giggled at it.

Written very much like a Goosebumps book this also suffers from the goosebump plot problems. For one we have Josie who is the sister who spends the entire book being mean, her whole thing is she knows something but she won't share that something, so she blames her sister and is a mean jerk about it the entire book. Josie has no redeeming traits to her. Like she yells at her sister Anna constantly, blames her every time something goes wrong, and suspects her so much that she can't have a normal conversation with her. All while refusing to tell her why she's upset and basically causing the problem.

The book is written like we should blame Anna for causing the problem but if Josie spoke up at any moment we would have the problem fixed because Anna would know what was erased from her memories. But Josie just can't have a civil conversation with her sister at all.

So in the vein of Goosebumps the main character blames themselves for what the secondary character causes. Likewise, and the vein of Goosebumps there is no reason to care about Josie besides Anna's cares about her.

There are me and young kids but this is a advanced level of cruelty, Josie never displays any kindness and even calls and a monster and basically goads her into causing all the problems.

The mom is the only parent in this situation but she's barely there. She's an obstacle at best and somehow siding with Josie every time that Josie has a complaint or problem to the point that she takes the other daughter's toys away at worst.

There's a dissonance between this family that is too big for me to believe, somehow the mother is oblivious to all of the magical elements yet they're all scattered about and obvious for her to see and read, but also she has been so busy that she has missed her child having magical powers and all of the incidents with her friends. Did nobody tell this mother? This book gave me more questions than answers and it's a one-off. I would like to know how the mother was never called but because these kids couldn't sleep after being turned into dolls. Or maybe how she handled the grandmother telling her anything? Or even if Josie snitched on her? Josie can't just say she doesn't want dolls and the mother not ask her why she doesn't want dolls in the house? They had to have had a conversation but nothing came from it?

Naturally by the end everything is resolved and somehow everyone is okay even though Anna is still isolated and alone save her family. The magic doesn't leave but it has an almost cliffhanger but we know it's a one-off so it's just an open-ended story.

I personally don't hate this book I find it interesting but it didn't bring anything new, dolls alone cannot save it. It made dolls creepy in a lot of ways and it touched on something that's lesser used but it just didn't bring new enough material to save it in my review. If it didn't have the boring Goosebumps problem with a character who's just an asshole the entire time and a character who's the protagonist being guilted all the time, it could have been a four-star book. But it's sadly falters and becomes nobody believes her and the people who do believe her won't communicate with her. An isolation and causation mess.

2.5 stars.
It's a Goosebumps book by another name and author. ( )