SECRET IN THE STARS

In this debut children’s book, a girl helps a ghost who is trying to solve a mystery and save his wife’s mountain inn.

In the summer before fifth grade, Abigail “Abi” Wunder is returning from a camping trip in the Allegheny Mountains with her father. She’s looking forward to seeing her new baby brother and starting summer art camp, but a breakdown near the small community of Pine Hill forces them to stay temporarily at the reputedly haunted Hilltop Inn. They’ll be the last guests for Dee Rainey, the inn’s owner, who must move out. After her husband Herbert’s death, his second will deeding the property to her can’t be found. The first will left the inn to his brother, Norman, who’s tearing it down to build a shopping center—and blaming Dee for Herbert’s death. Abi keeps seeing visions of little white boxes in the sunshine, and that’s not all: She meets Herbert’s ghost, who wordlessly and urgently asks for her help. With the assistance of her new friend Jess Summers, Abi follows the spirit’s clues to track down the second will, hoping to save the inn from destruction and Dee from jail. In her series opener, Wilson takes the classic meddling-kids mystery genre and jazzes it up with supernatural elements. Abi is engaging, and her talent for drawing ties in well with the plot. A drawback is that the author tends to repetitively hammer the same points, such as the shopping center plan or a confusion over Herbert’s pills. And the ending involves an implausibly easy development. Tutti, who has illustrated books in several genres, contributes pencil sketches that are nicely shaded; the light-skinned characters have expressive faces but often stiff poses.

A few missteps but a fun and suspenseful adventure.