Book Review: The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane

The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane by Julia Nobel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars. For a debut novel this is pretty good. Nothing super original here in terms of plot: girl sent to boarding school, makes a couple key friends, secret society (passage ways and all), bullying, absent parents, etc. Lots of intrigue, some action, tons of time spent doing homework, some soccer (football), and a good dose of mystery.

Characters
One of the stand-out pieces of Julia Nobel's debut is that the narrative of our lead gal is very strong. Right from the first couple chapters I felt like she had a dominant, prevalent voice. Her personality shone through and she felt very real to me. Sadly the secondary characters were all a little flat, even the two best friends. I'm hoping this is an area that Nobel's writing improves and evolves in. After all the world expects well written secondary characters since Hermoine and Ron entered our lives.

Continuing Story
This is a part of a series, and so not all of our questions are answered in this first book. However, enough of the mystery is revealed so as to not feel ripped off. The biggest thing that bugs me about the whole set-up, and what will continue, is our lead gals Mother. She's supposed to be a parenting expert; yet she's a really crappy Mom (not unlike Leonard on Big Bang Theory's mother). I'm not sure the choice to make her a parenting expert really made sense. I get the idea of her fame being in the way of parenting, and all that jazz; but I would have preferred she was just a movie star or something. Unless in the next book (or two?) we actually delve into the psychosis of having a mother who is a parenting expert. Given this is a middle grade book I'm going to say that is unlikely.

Overall
This is a decent read. It kept me occupied for a period of time and reads up quickly. There's not a lot of fancy vocabulary in The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane, which is good for a middle grade book. I feel if I went back and analyzed this closely there are probably some plot holes and issues; but I didn't have any jump off the page at me or get in my way of enjoying the story. Overall a decent debut by a Canadian author; and so I am rounding up my 3.5 stars to 4.
A tidbit of advice from this book that stuck out to me:

"...when you prepare for the absolute worst, nothing can be as bad as what you’ve imagined."

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

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