thank you to netgalley for the advanced reading copy of feathers of the phoenix. I couldn't tell if this was supposed to be sci-fi off a very loose historical fiction take or if it was just sci-fi and just similar to historical.

Rosa is an experienced time traveller who appeared in the excellent Sons of the Sphinx, and I think she was responsible for giving Jerome an ankh to keep in touch. For Jerome, the idea of time travel is, well, screwy. So despite his joy at a holiday with Rosa to a Greek island to see his grandfather, when he starts experiencing odd events he dismisses them – apart from the weird people who seem to want to break into grandfather’s house. Like a good adventurer, he decides to track them down.

That leads grandfather to reveal the secret of the Five Feathers… and the adventure takes off, with secret signs, hidden caves, journeys in the dark, rock falls, and baddies around every corner. And the statue of an Atlantean horse with an all-too-knowing look in in its eye.

This is an excellent adventure, and will lead even the most reluctant reader onwards to discover the location of the next feather – and who will turn up to try to prevent Jerome and Rosa from finding it. Cheryl Carpinello writes exciting contemporary language for the more reluctant older middle grader. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series!

Trigger warnings: brief blood and violence, near death

Normally I give a small summary of a book that I’ve finished reading before I go into my review but I’m going to try to be as vague as I can with this since the book is so short. This is the story of a girl named Rosa and her cousin Jerome that go on a quest on their grandfathers home island to recover magical items after Rosa is visited by a mysterious stranger at her home.

Positives: the book is a very quick and engaging read. I only had the ebook of this so it took me slightly longer to read than normal but I still sped right through it. The book is action packed and is very good at keeping your attention. The book is well written and enjoyable.

Negatives: I picked up this book because I saw that this is the first in a series and I’m always on the lookout for new fantasy series to get into. This led to me being very confused at the start of this book. I don’t know if there were novellas or short stories or other actual novels that came before this but the book is constantly referring to events that not only happened before this book but we’re talked at length at the start of the book with no explanation til halfway through. The constant references to these events got very old very fast and brought me out of the current story every time.

The book was very repetitive. Like I said above, the contents of the pervious book were constantly being referred to. The main character was constantly holding on to her ankh necklace for comfort. People had a really bad habit of bumping into each other and knocking each other down. It started to feel like padding (which is odd considering how short this is.)

The main mystery of the book and several conflicts were solved entirely too easily for me. There was no time to build tension about the majority of things that happened in the book.

All of my complaints may be on be more than on the book though. It became apparent to me about halfway through the book that while I thought this was a young adult novel when I picked it up it’s clearly meant to be middle grade. It reads like it had very young readers in mind (despite the fact that the female MC is 17 and it got relatively bloody toward the end of the book.) I recognize that I am 100% not the target audience of this book.

With all that said I think this is a good introduction for younger readers to fantasy/ magical realism. Not entirely sure if I’m going to finish the series on my own but I recommend this to all other readers but especially, like I said above, you get readers that are new to this genre.

👫Good kid's adventure tale📖

I would place this as a story for middle-graders, maybe on the younger end, as it focuses on two siblings having an explorer style adventure chase with a villain to avoid. Don't look for a lot of character development. As an adult, I found the beginning most interesting as it posits what happened to fabled Atlantis.

Good suspense as teenagers Rosa and younger brother Jerome chase clues to assist in the revival of Atlantis. And Rosa's special ability to hear the dead who apply to her for help was a nice twist. So, a bit of fantasy adventure on a small Greek island.

Rosa keeps referencing her previous adventure in time travel to ancient Egypt and I found that a bit distracting. This story ends in a HFN and indications that the story may continue in several sequels that take the pair to other destinations. I would not mind seeing where they go even though this is not a book written with an adult readership in mind.

Thanks to BooksGoSocial and NetGalley for sharing a complimentary advance copy of the story; this is my voluntary and honest opinion.