A tale with an original puzzle and setting, although its hero deserves better treatment from his family.
In this middle-grade series detective story, Jake Wheeler investigates mysteriously colored local honey as his detective grandfather looks into who stole some beehives.
At the beginning of his summer vacation, young Jake had to accompany his Granny on a cruise because his grandfather—“a world-renowned detective”—was busy on a case, which Jake later helped him solve. Now summer’s almost over, and this time, Jake’s mother makes him leave Montréal for southern Alberta, where Granny is looking after her vacationing sister Peggy’s farm. Grandpa is again called away to work, and Granny can’t maintain the farm alone. As before, Jake is joined by his snooty cousin Millie from England, who likes to be addressed as “Lady Millie.” While milking goats, verbally sparring with Millie, avoiding the bullying Kreft brothers, and attending a design camp, Jake works on finding the solution to a local mystery: Something is turning the honey in beekeepers’ hives bright shades of blue, red, and green. Meanwhile, Grandpa is investigating his own honey-related mystery, involving the theft of beehives from California almond groves. With tips from Grandpa, help from Millie, his own detective work, and a few lucky breaks, Jake solves the colored-honey conundrum—and learns some important family history. Malmqvist (The Great Mediterranean Cheese Heist, 2018) structures this story in a fun way by paralleling the protagonist’s and his grandfather’s stories; Jake’s puzzle is appropriately kid-sized, while Grandpa’s beehive heist plot involves a wide area and big money. Although coincidence still plays a role in this story, Jake does more actual investigating than he did in the last book. Jake’s voice is believable, but Granny’s harsh treatment of him—played for laughs—really isn’t funny; she often scolds, accuses, and disbelieves him. Grandpa, on the phone, doesn’t help and just chuckles whenever Jake complains. Nothing in Granny’s past or Jake’s behavior warrants this—he’s just a decent, polite kid with a curious streak.
A tale with an original puzzle and setting, although its hero deserves better treatment from his family.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5255-3752-3
Page Count: 143
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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