booksare42's reviews
592 reviews

 What an absolutely fantastic middle-grade mystery adventure! This was my first five star read of the year and this book is definitely going to play a starring role in my year-end wrap-ups this year. 

In Murder on the Safari Star, Hal and Uncle Nat are taking the Safari Star from Pretoria to Victoria Falls. Hal, who is still buzzing from his crime solving on The Highland Falcon and the California Comet, is secretly hoping there will be a crime for him to solve. When he sees the owner of the train acting suspiciously, he’s convinced that something nefarious is going on on the Safari Star and he’s determined to figure it out. Later on in the journey, when a passenger is found dead in their locked compartment, Hal is even more determined to figure out what’s going on. 

Hal is such a fantastic character. I love how his enthusiasm and knowledge of trains has grown throughout the series. Even though he has some mature moments, especially when solving crimes, he also has a lot of impulsive moments that remind the reader that he’s twelve. I love how he’s grown throughout the series and how he’s getting better at knowing when he should get Uncle Nat, or another adult, involved with his crime solving. I also enjoyed reading about Uncle Nat in this series, I thought he did a good job balancing the role of responsible adult while also trusting Hal. 

As far as the side characters go, Murder on the Safari Star did not disappoint. All of the Adventures on Trains books have had an interesting assortment of passengers on them who all had moments that made them a bit suspicious. The characters that stood out the most to me were Winston, Chipo, and Mr. Crosby. Winston and Chipo (a mongoose) helped Hal solve the crime. I thought they made a great team and I loved how Winston taught Hal about wildlife and conservation along the way. Chipo is currently the front runner for the best animal character of the year and I especially loved the illustrations that she was in. Mr. Crosby was a thoroughly unlikable character, he was loud, rude, and obnoxious and he caused a lot of drama on the Safari Star. There were also some fantastic female characters in this book and I loved the moment at the end where some of them came together with a business plan. 

The mystery aspect of Murder on the Safari Star did not disappoint. There were quite a few twists and turns that kept me on my toes. Lots of characters had motive and I loved the interview process after the murder took place. While I was able to piece parts of the mystery together, there were some aspects that left me guessing until the very end. 

The other thing I want to talk about is wildlife and conservation. This book had some fantastic messages about conservation, protecting endangered species, and poaching. There was a lot of talk about the black horn rhino and how critically endangered it is. I love it when middle-grade books have important messages like this because it gets kids aware and they can learn a ton. 

I also want to mention how much I love the illustrations in this book. Elisa Paganelli is a fantastic illustrator and her artwork made the story come to life. I love seeing Hal’s drawings on the page and it’s one of the many things that make this series standout. 

Overall, this was a fantastic read and I cannot wait to see what Hal and Uncle Nat get up to next. 

 Cat Among the Pigeons is one of the better Hercule Poirot books that I’ve read lately. It was super easy to read and get into, and in fact, I read it in one sitting. 

What I liked most about this book was the setting. This book mostly takes place at a boarding school, and I’m generally a fan of mysteries set at boarding schools. I like seeing how the staff and the students interact and boarding schools are always full of secrets. 

What I didn’t love about this book was the international conspiracy aspect. Part of the mystery involves some missing jewels that have international significance. I don’t want to say much more about this, because of spoilers, but I wasn’t a huge fan of this aspect. 

I did love Julia Upjohn, one of the students at the boarding school. I thought she was incredibly clever and it would have been neat if Christie had decided to use her in other books. 

Poirot did not play that big of a role in this one. He came into the story near the end and his role was quite small. Normally this would disappoint me, but I enjoyed some of the other characters enough to make up for his absence. 

Overall, while I found the mystery to be enjoyable, I found the book to be overall underwhelming. It had it’s clever moments, but there wasn’t anything that jumped out at me to make this a memorable read. 

Thank you to The Write Reads for organizing and inviting me to be part of this blog tour. Thank you to the publisher, Neem Tree Press, for providing me with a digital copy of Clytemnestra’s Bind for the tour. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I want to start off my review by saying that Clytemnestra’s Bind has a lot of potentially triggering content. Clytemnestra’s Bind contains scenes of violence, murder, infanticide, rape, domestic violence, and child abuse. There is other potentially triggering content, these are just some of the major potential triggers.

I went into this book not knowing anything about Clytemnestra and having very little knowledge about Greek Mythology in general. There were a few names I recognized, but most of the characters were completely unknown to me. I spent a lot of time trying to piece together who was who and how they were connected, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it did lead to some confusion.

I enjoyed how the story was told in Clytemnestra’s Bind. I think the author did a good job of telling the story of Clytemnestra without bogging the reader down with an overwhelming amount of information. As someone who didn’t know anything about Clytemnestra, I was able to follow along fairly well.

I also loved the writing in Clytemnestra’s Bind. It was vivid, descriptive, and it flowed beautifully. The writing style really brought the story to life and some of the scenes really jumped off of the page. This was a bit of an issue with some of the more graphically violent scenes, but the writing made for an enjoyable read.

I really did not like any of the characters in this book, though I don’t think they were meant to be likable. Clytemnestra was a complicated character. She was caught in an impossible situation and I think the author did a great job illustrating this. While I felt sympathy for her, and my heart broke for her many times, I still wasn’t fond of her and some of the decisions she made, especially with how she sometimes treated her children.

While I didn’t really like the characters in this book, I did like how the relationship between the characters evolved throughout the story. Alliances and friendships were made and betrayed throughout the book. I liked how it was hard to know which characters could be trusted because it seemed like most everyone had their own agenda. I enjoyed the plotting even though I didn’t like how violent some of the outcomes were.

Speaking of violence, one of the things I disliked about this book was how violent and gruesome some of the scenes were. I’m not a fan of graphic violence and some of the scenes in Clytemnestra’s Bind made me want to put the book down and not return to it. The opening chapters were horrific and hard to get through. While I appreciated their purpose and they did provide some valuable insight into the characters, they were a sign that mythology might not be for me.

Overall, I think the author did a great job bringing Clytemnestra’s story to life but ultimately this book really wasn’t for me. I think this book is perfect for fans of Greek mythology, but I think that Greek mythology is just a tad bit too violent for my tastes. 

I went into Death and Fromage with relatively high expectations because I really enjoyed Death and Croissants. Unfortunately, Death and Fromage did not reach my expectations and I was kind of disappointed with this book. 

What I enjoyed about Death and Fromage was the twisty mystery. I liked that the list of suspects kept changing and I enjoyed trying to piece together how everyone was connected. I also liked how many layers there were to the mystery because it left a lot of potential motives behind the murders. I also enjoyed the scene near the end where the criminal was revealed to the town, it reminded me of a scene from a Poirot novel. 

What bothered me about Death and Fromage was Richard. I don’t want to spoil anything, but his lack of backbone really irritated me. It bothered me that he was seemingly incapable of standing up for or making decisions for himself. In Death and Croissants he was clueless, but it was slightly endearing because he had been unwillingly thrown into the world of crime solving. In this book, his cluelessness was more irritating than endearing. 

As far as the other characters so, I did enjoy seeing Valerie again. She’s a whirlwind and a mystery. I enjoyed learning a bit more about her, though I still have dozens of questions about her. I also enjoyed seeing Madame Tablier, I appreciate her no-nonsense attitude. 

As far as humour goes, Death and Fromage had a few amusing moments. Overall though, I found that a lot of the humour fell flat for me. 

Overall, I didn’t love Death and Fromage and I’m not sure if I’m going to continue with this series. While the mystery aspect of the book was entertaining, not being a fan of the main character made this a difficult book to get through. 

M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman have done it again! Danger at Dead Man’s Pass is a twisty and delightfully fun middle-grade mystery.

In Danger at Dead Man’s Pass, Hal and Uncle Nat go undercover to help uncover what happened to Alexander Kratzenstein and if there is any truth behind the Kratzenstein family curse. Up in the Brocken mountains, Hal uncovers secrets about the Kratzenstein family but also some secrets about his own family while investigating.

This book was different from the previous books in the series because Hal and Uncle Nat were asked to investigate a mystery instead of stumbling upon one. It had some fun scenes at the beginning like Uncle Nat teaching Hal about how to go undercover. There were also a few moments that made me laugh when Hal was scrambling to not blow his cover.

What made Danger at Dead Man’s Pass extra exciting was it was clear that Uncle Nat was hiding something from Hal. I enjoyed seeing Hal put the pieces together and the conversation Hal and Uncle Nat had after Hal confronted him. I’m curious to see how Uncle Nat’s past plays a role in the remaining two books in the series.

I enjoyed the mystery in this one. There were a lot of suspicious characters and the idea of a family curse kept things a bit creepy. I liked how Hal gathered clues and put things together. I also loved his big reveal at the end and how he explained to everyone how he put everything together.

Even though this adventure didn’t fully take place on a train, trains did play a big role in the story. I loved the train journey from the UK to France to Germany. I also thought the Kratzenstein family’s personal train was pretty neat. It’s been fun seeing how much Hal has learned about trains throughout the series and how enthusiastic he’s become.

I liked the side characters in this book. Hilda, Ozan, and Herman were so welcoming to Hal. They seemed to have a ton of fun together, and I loved the scenes where they were playing detective. One of my favourite things about this series is the friends that Hal makes on his journeys and how they help him solve the crime.

Overall, I enjoyed this train adventure. I adore this series and I cannot wait to dive into book five.