An inventive puzzle filled with tenderness and warmth.
Two New York City friends have a new mystery to solve in their venerable apartment building in this sequel to 2024’s The Queen of Ocean Parkway.
Roya’s grief over the loss of her beloved Baba is slightly abated by keeping busy solving mysteries with her friend Amin and recording their podcast. Their neighbor Thea Lim-Lambert has discovered her great-grandfather Declan’s fantastical secret room hidden behind a closet containing intricately carved wooden doors and drawers, her grandfather Errol’s boyhood journal, and a note addressed to a “Lambert of the Future,” which provides a clue for a scavenger hunt in the building that leads to a valuable treasure. After Thea asks the two sleuths to help her solve this complicated mystery, the friends use their considerable skills to decipher Errol’s baffling clues, dealing with setbacks and triumphs and supporting each other through side adventures along the way. Thea sees herself as inadequate and unseen in her talented, artistic family and has difficulty accepting that Roya and Amin could be her real friends. In a nice twist, Errol, who has Alzheimer’s, has some heart-tugging lucid moments that help provide further information. The mystery is compelling, with lots of surprises and a very satisfying conclusion. Readers will love visiting Brooklyn with these exceedingly clever, kind, and compassionate characters. Thea is cued Korean and white, Amin presents Indian American, and the previous book established Roya as Iranian American. Final art not seen.
An inventive puzzle filled with tenderness and warmth. (Mystery. 9-13)Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593809822
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Full of puzzles to think about, puns to groan at and references to children’s book titles, this solid, tightly plotted read...
When a lock-in becomes a reality game, 12-year-old Kyle Keeley and his friends use library resources to find their way out of Alexandriaville’s new public library.
The author of numerous mysteries for children and adults turns his hand to a puzzle adventure with great success. Starting with the premise that billionaire game-maker Luigi Lemoncello has donated a fortune to building a library in a town that went without for 12 years, Grabenstein cleverly uses the tools of board and video games—hints and tricks and escape hatches—to enhance this intricate and suspenseful story. Twelve 12-year-old winners of an essay contest get to be the first to see the new facility and, as a bonus, to play his new escape game. Lemoncello’s gratitude to the library of his childhood extends to providing a helpful holographic image of his 1968 librarian, but his modern version also includes changing video screens, touch-screen computers in the reading desks and an Electronic Learning Center as well as floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stretching up three stories. Although the characters, from gamer Kyle to schemer Charles Chiltington, are lightly developed, the benefits of pooling strengths to work together are clear.
Full of puzzles to think about, puns to groan at and references to children’s book titles, this solid, tightly plotted read is a winner for readers and game-players alike. (Mystery. 9-13)Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-87089-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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