Darienne Stewart says: "Parents need to know that Doll Bones scores high on the creepiness scale but isn't actually that violent. It's spooky, the kind of story where it isn't always clear what might be truly supernatural -- or simply the product of an overactive imagination. The most frightening scene may be one involving an unbalanced and aggressively chatty stranger on the bus. The story centers on the mysterious death of a girl long ago, but the real thrust of the novel is how the three main characters struggle to navigate the changes of early adolescence. All three tweens are coping with difficult family backgrounds, and one child lost her parents in an accident. They leave on an overnight journey without alerting their parents."