By Amy Ephron
4Rbooks 3/6 grades 5-8
Amazon 4.4/5 grades level 3-7
Goodreads 3.36
Common Sense Media Not Yet Reviewed
177 pages
Synopsis
Tess and Max are back in England with Aunt Evie, waiting for their parents to join them. They are not expecting adventures like the last two visits, but adventures seem to find them.
It starts with a boy they see in the Sanborn Hotel restaurant. He seems to disappear halfway through his meal. They later meet up with him again and he invites them to play games in his hotel room while his parents are having a party. The hotel room is on a floor that doesn’t exist on every elevator.
The next day, Colin seems to merge with Max and become one person. He leads Tess on an adventure through the hotel, and inside the hotel, eventually landing on the other side of the wall which appears to time travel them back to Victorian England. Tess does her best to separate Colin and Max and bring them all home, to the proper time for all of them.
Parental Guidelines
Tess and Max find themselves at a party thrown by Colin’s parents. There is a medium there reading people’s fortune and future with cards.
Max is possessed by Colin who seems to be a ghost.
Colin/Max walks into an icy body of water and saved by Tess.
They are chased by “monsters” after escaping the water.
Tess and Max’s parents have left them with Aunt Evie again.
Recommendation
This is the third book in “The Other Side” series. Like the first two it has some interesting moments but is less satisfying as a story. It is confusing at times and the resolution is not fully fleshed out. I’m still not sure what happened and why, nor what the purpose of it was.
Though a short book, I’m not sure it is a good read for a low or struggling reader. It takes time to digest what is happening and why. More advanced readers might enjoy it more, but I feel even they will struggle with what the point of the story is and why they are investing time in it. It’s confusing. The scene in the hallway with the orange lights and the ending with the monsters in particular are confusing and hard to picture.
It’s too bad. The premise had potential but the story just isn’t detailed enough (a complaint I had about books 1 and 2, also). This book has been out since 2019 but only has 19 reviews on Amazon, and 86 on Goodreads. It is set at Christmas, but is not a Christmas story.
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