By Amy Ephron
4RBooks: 4/6, grades 4-8
Amazon rating: 4.6/5, grades 3-7
Good Reads: 3.55/5
Common Sense Media: Not Reviewed
266 pages
Synopsis:
Max and Tess are back in England to visit their Aunt Evie. This time they are enjoying a vacation at Devon by the Sea while their parents are on a getaway weekend to Barcelona, Spain. Aunt Evie had rented a beach house for the three of them.
As they were driving to the beach, Aunt Evie stopped at the zoo to pick up tickets for the next day. While she was waiting in line, Tess slipped away and a guard at the gate allowed her a few minutes to explore. She came upon a cage with a baby tiger suffering from a needle in its paw. Tess reaches in and pulls out the needle which starts to emit rainbow colors. Tess now realizes that some of the magic from last summer will be with them again this year.
The next day, while Aunt Evie is shopping, the children visit a carnival. There they ride the Ferris Wheel where Tess helps save a young boy from falling. Next, they meet Tara the psychic who hypnotizes Tess while Max plays with some instruments which seem to move the entire carnival to another location. Max and Tess don’t know where they are or how to get home. They meet two other children, Tatiana and Alexei, the Breathtaking Baranovas. They work together to try and escape the carnival and bring the Baranovas sister, Anna, home.
Parental Guidance: low
Tess and Max are seemingly kidnapped by magic to work in a “Ghost
Carnival”.
Anna has been separated from her brother and sister to work in a different
carnival as a wing walker.
Recommendation:
This is a companion book to The Castle in the Mist, a book I reviewed in August of 2021. Same characters, different adventure. Like the first book, this was a good, easy read and entertaining enough to hold your attention. It is age appropriate, and most children should enjoy the fantasy aspects.
Also, like the first book, I wished for a little more explanation and understanding of what was happening. Why was Lorenzo keeping the Baranovas and the children captive? How was the baby tiger connected to the carnival? How was the magic of Tara and Julian involved, and why did they let Lorenzo get away with his evil? None of these questions may plague a child reading this book, but mature children and adults may find it simplistic and missing in detail.
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