Book report help?

Question

If you have read the book "Summer Of Fear" by Lois Duncan, then please help me. I finished reading the book last night for my report and I need opinions on my summary of it, please tell me what you think I should correct or add to it or anything else.

My summary of Summer Of Fear is about a girl named Julie whose parents die in a car wreck. And moves in with her Aunt Leslie and her Uncle Tom, and her cousins’ Rachel, Peter, and Bobby. But as soon as Julie moves in with them, Rachel can tell that something is not right about her cousin, weird things have been happening lately like Rachel’s dog Trickle growling at her cousin, (And has never growled at anyone before) and biting her, also his mysterious illness that leads to his untimely death. The fact that she is nothing like what Rachel’s aunt and uncle described her as, never opened letters from her friends from her boarding school in New England, and talked to her neighbor who is a professor that spent many years studying witches and what he tells her adds up to what Rachel has found out about her cousin.

After all that Rachel begins to suspect more and more that her cousin Julie is a witch. And is righ too. Julie finally confesses that her real name is Sarah Blane and didn’t die in the car crash like everyone thought she did, it was Rachel’s aunt, uncle, and the real Julie who died that night. Later on Sarah tells Rachel that she cast a spell on her mom to kill her mom and her, but Rachel and her friend Mike get there in time to stop the spell from coming true.

Thank you!!

Answer 1

There are some things confusing me in your summary.

Is the story about Julie or Rachel? Who is the protagonist (who is the main character)? Reading the summary, I'd say it's actually Rachel's story, with Julie as one character in it.

Does Rachel live with her aunt and uncle or parents? Are those other cousins Rachel's cousins too, or her siblings? That should be clarified.

Don't start out with "My summary of..." That's redundant.

Look for sentence fragments in the first paragraph, and at least one place where you have an apostophe that shouldn't be there.

Watch out for run-on sentences.

The sentence that starts, "The fact..." meanders around too long. It took me a while to get the gist of it.

Sarah cast a spell on her mom to kill her mom and her...very confusing, and again, who is the mom? Is it Aunt Leslie? The construction is awkward, so I'd reword that phrase so that when you say it out loud it sounds right.

Try reading this out loud and see how it sounds to you. I think I understand what's going on in the story, but I had to work too hard to figure it out.