Hi! Apparently, I took January off! LOL. But if you look at the extra book titles at the bottom of the last post, I had a lot of reading to do and ALL of them were great!
So, these two blurbs are pretty short but worth writing about. And MC is main character, in case that wasn't clear. I would have spelled out protagonist but that's long in a title. Both have awesome covers, too. Anyway...on to the books!
The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane by Julia Nobel
From the publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers (March 5, 2019) (was reprinted with illustrations 2020)
With a dad who disappeared years ago and a mother who's a bit too busy to parent, Emmy is shipped off to Wellsworth, a prestigious boarding school in England, where she's sure she won't fit in.
But then she finds a box of mysterious medallions in the attic of her home with a note reading: These belonged to your father.
When she arrives at school, she finds the strange symbols from the medallions etched into walls and books, which leads Emmy and her new friends, Jack and Lola, to Wellsworth's secret society: The Order of Black Hollow Lane.
Emmy can't help but think that the society had something to do with her dad's disappearance, and that there may be more than just dark secrets in the halls of Wellsworth…
I really
had fun with this one. Even though it’s a familiar plot, with a Harry Potter
feel, I enjoyed the characters and setting and the friendships. AND there’s a
second book, which I’m looking forward to reading! If you like boarding
schools, England, secret societies, then you’ll like this one. See if you can
figure out who are good guys and who are bad guys. Plus, she’s a Canadian
writer – and it’s an older book – hopefully you can find it easily.
The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone by Jaclyn Moriarty
From the publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books (October 9, 2018)
Bronte Mettlestone is ten years old when her parents are killed by pirates. This does not bother her particularly: her parents ran away to have adventures when she was a baby. She has been raised by her Aunt Isabelle, with assistance from the Butler, and has spent a pleasant childhood of afternoon teas and riding lessons. Now, however, her parents have left detailed instructions for Bronte in their will. (Instructions that, annoyingly, have been reinforced with faery cross-stitch, which means that if she doesn't complete them, terrible things could happen!).
She travels the kingdoms, perfectly alone, delivering gifts to ten other aunts: a farmer aunt who owns an orange orchard, a veterinarian aunt who specializes in dragon care, a pair of aunts who captain a cruise ship, and a former rock star aunt who is now the reigning monarch of a small kingdom. But as she travels from aunt to aunt, Bronte suspects there might be more to this journey than the simple delivery of treasure.
This one was hard to put in a blurb because it’s layered and complex but not hard to understand from a reading standpoint, but from a writing one.
The language and writing are unique and interesting. There are so many characters and storylines and so much happens that my writer brain wants to implode. That may not sound like a good thing, but it is, since it would be awesome to write like this.
To have all the threads interwoven and fit together, coupled with the language, makes for a magical read. (Also, not a new book, but new to me, so it should be easy to find and there are FIVE books in this Kingdoms and Empires series).
