Reviewed By: Shelley Walter, OHS Library Secretary

This is the story of a teenage girl, Poppy, who is an aspiring actress. She has a nightmare performance and is ridiculed by her peers, namely a boy name Blake. Blake bullies her and she seeks revenge and finds a secret studio inside the town’s famous candle factory.

The old woman in the secret studio, who crafts wax figures of various people including townspeople, warns Poppy of a plot to take over the town by replacing the humans with wax substitutes.

The book took time to get going and at times seemed to drag. It is a good story and did get my interest as it went along.

Poppy’s family did not quite develop into interesting characters. The wax teenage boy “Dud” plays a part, I found myself wishing he had a bigger part (he did in the end).  Poppy has a somewhat sarcastic sense of life and I identified with that.

My first young adult novel to read in quite a while.