Dangerous Wishes is a sequel to The Spirit House (1991; see separate entry, Vol. 9), but unlike most sequels it is superior to the original book, although The Spirit House is a good read.

The events in The Spirit House take place about three-and-a-half years before those in Dangerous Wishes; the main character is not Dom, then eleven years old, but Julie, his older sister, a sophomore in high school whose principal concern in life is being popular with other teenagers. The Spirit House has a first-person narrator, Julie, rather than the third-person omniscient narrator of Dangerous Wishes, and Julie is unreliable, missing important details and twisting her account of events so that they focus on herself.

Dominic's role in The Spirit House is that of a secondary character: He builds the spirit house which is a source of much of the trouble Julie endures, and he is...