Absolutely Truly
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Average rating4.3
An unsent letter in a first edition copy of Charlotte’s Web leads to a hunt for treasure in this heartwarming middle grade mystery from the author of The Mother-Daughter Book Club. Now that Truly Lovejoy’s father has been injured by an IED in Afghanistan and is having trouble finding work back home, the family moves from Texas to tiny Pumpkin Falls, New Hampshire, to take over Lovejoy’s Books, a struggling bookstore that’s been in the family for one hundred years. With two older brothers and two younger sisters clamoring for attention, her mother back in school, and everyone up to their eyebrows trying to keep Lovejoy’s Books afloat, Truly feels more overlooked than usual. So she pours herself into uncovering the mystery of an undelivered letter she finds stuck in a valuable autographed first edition of Charlotte’s Web, which subsequently goes missing from the bookshop. What’s inside the envelope leads Truly and her new Pumpkin Falls friends on a madcap treasure hunt around town, chasing clues that could spell danger. Fans of Heather Vogel Frederick’s Mother-Daughter Book Club series “will rejoice for a new series with a similarly cozy New England setting, great characters, and literary references to beloved classics” (School Library Journal).
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A simple lovely mystery for kids. The book is about 350 pages, so the length could be an issue for some. It felt like the perfect length for me to get to know Truly, her family, and her friends. I fell in love with then too. There is nothing objectionable in the book as far as the romance or the mystery. There is some name calling, but no inappropriate words. And it deals so well with the trauma that some military kids experience. It is not a deep and painful way of dealing with it either. It is realistic without adding to the trauma. I can't wait to read the next one in this series!
Frederick has set up a great cast of characters, a fabulous setting, and a clever plot in this middle-grade children's mystery. And the really lovely thing is that these characters and this setting are big enough to carry a series, which is where I sense she is going. And that's Absolutely Truly good news.
