YMMV / Jade Green

• Complete Monster: Charles, Judith's creepy forty-year-old cousin, is revealed to be a Dirty Old Man early on, but is far worse. After Jade Green rejected his advances towards her, he chopped off her hand when she tried to defend herself, resulting in her bleeding to death. After Judith likewise rejects his advantages in favor of the miller's son Zeke, he decides to murder her as well, though not before raping her. He also set the cellar of those who offered him shelter on fire to collect the money in Uncle Geoffrey's will after he planned to give a percentage of his money to Judith once he passed away.
• Moral Event Horizon: Charles crosses the line when he murders Jade Green, then chops off her hand when she tries to defend herself. And judging from the fact that Mrs. Hasting was led to believe that she bled to death, it was gruesome.
• Nightmare Fuel: It's a ghost story, so naturally this is a given...though there is more to the story than simply a ghost haunting.
  • For starters, the scratching noises inside Judith's wardrobe. She initially dismisses them as mice...but as it turned out, they are not.
  • Judith entering the attic where Jade Green's bedroom was, and discovering the bloodstain, the severed hand, and the cleaver marks on the floor.
  • Of course, we have Jade Green haunting the house as a severed hand...simply because Judith brought one thing to the house that was green.
  • Charles himself manages to be more horrifying than any severed hand, however. He attempts to sexually harass Judith through her own sleeve, and continues to stalk Judith as she gradually falls in love with Zeke.
  • Then we find out that he was the one who killed Jade Green, and that he had chopped off her hand when she tried to defend herself. The worst part? He plans to rape and kill Judith, simply because she would not give him a kiss. Charles is a teenage girl's worst nightmare come true.
  • He deserved it in the end, but the scene where Jade Green strangles Charles is still rather scary. Thankfully, it is revealed that she was not planning to harm any of the residents and that she was simply trying to protect Judith the whole time, and as soon as her job is done, she returns to the afterlife.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Little Girls?: The book generally appears on YA book lists nowadays, but for a while in the early 2000s, teachers often recommended it to middle school girls due to its short length and the author's other books (notably, Shiloh). The plot centers around the ghost of a teenage girl whose 40-year-old adopted brother raped her, cut her hand off with the cleaver she was trying to use in self-defense, and left her to bleed out on the attic stairs. The book is set three years later and there's no graphic flashback, but still not exactly PG fare.