We loved the writing and dark vibe of this novel. The historical setting was gloomy, atmospheric and very visual. There was also some great humour in it - we loved the character of the crow and the ickiness of Ma Scroggins and her inn. Clogging up the ditch was really funny and we loved all the chaos that came out of that. The illustrations added to the whole fun dastardlyness of the novel.
The story rambled a little bit for us. It felt like it took a long while to get to the highwaymen and we would have liked to see more of the from the off, giving more drama and peril. We liked Lil and Ned but felt they could have had a slightly stronger purpose and drive to make us care about them a bit more. However, we enjoyed the overall feel of the book - it felt like a very traditional spooky type of story which we'd like to see more of.

This is one of the funniest, most engaging children's books I got to read this year! Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this. :)

Welcome to The Squawking Mackerel, an unusual little inn where our smart, creative and inventive protagonist, Lil, works after the owner, Ma Scroggins, took her in in her father's absence. But Ma Scroggins' business is on the brink of failure, and Lil has to come up with inventive ways to keep business afloat... if only some pesky, nasty, smelly highwaymen didn't get in the way of her plan!

This is a really fun 7+ read about wild immaginations, newfound friendships and creative ways of getting justice. I truly loved the character building throughout the book, as well as the relationships between the various characters. The scene of the highwaymen reunion had me in absolute stitches, as well as any reference to Ma Scroggins cooking. The black-and-white illustrations throughout bring the story and characters to life. I can see so many children giggling and laughing as they leaf through the pages.

Such a fun book by a seasoned, expert author. I really hope this gets discovered by so many children and will be personally gifting this to one or two I know myself. :)

Such a fun middle grade novel with plenty of gross out humour for kids with strong stomachs (which is most of them to be fair!). Plenty of laugh out loud, slapstick moments and a great story about making friends and supporting each other too. I loved the main protagonist’s crow ‘pet’ , so much avian, puckish character!

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have been drawn to pick up a book after a glimpse of its cover and this is a title that I couldn’t wait to read after seeing it appear on Twitter a couple of months ago. When I saw it was available to request on Net Galley, I duly did so, without any real idea as to what the book was about and once approved, duly downloaded it and bumped it straight to the top of the pile, still none the wiser as to what I was about to read.

While some readers might be horrified at this approach, for me it has – fortunately – paid off very nicely, as this is a read which is just up my street. Packed full of off-the-wall humour and brilliantly illustrated by the author, this is a cracking story which will go down a storm with less confident readers in upper KS2, particularly as at 256 pages it is significantly shorter than many other titles aimed at this age group.

Our story opens at The Squawking Mackerel, a grubby inn where owner Ma Scroggins’s adopted daughter Lil opens the door to a stranger who is looking for accommodation for the night after his carriage has got stuck in a quagmire en route to his intended destination. Accompanied by a boy, the stranger, a Mr Sprottle, tells Lil that he will only need one room and as Lil is about to fetch some soup for him, the inn’s door bursts open and a clearly wealthy family enters, telling those assembled that they have been robbed by a highwayman and are in need of shelter – shelter that Ma Scroggins is reluctant to provide to the currently penniless family.

Once Mr Sprottle has settled into his room, the boy accompanying him tells Lil his name is Ned and the following morning she introduces him to her pet Crow, Augustus Scratchy, who she is hiding in Ma Scroggins’s turnip shed. Following breakfast, more travellers arrive who have had an unpleasant encounter with the local highwaymen, infuriating Ma Scroggins whose livelihood is again put under pressure by this unfortunate turn of events, and who threatens to sell up to move to a turnip farm.

Determined not to let that happen, Lil starts to hatch a plan to banish the highwaymen and with Ned’s help slowly starts to put it into place. Convinced that a bigger, stronger highwayman is what is needed to scare away the thieves, and armed with an assortment of odds and ends from the inn, Lil decides to summon the legendary Ghastly Jack Crowheart to do just that. Can she, Ned and Scratchy drive away the highwaymen and restore Ma Scroggins’s business to its former glory, or is her fate to become a turnip farmer forever more?

Lil and Ned are a great pairing. Both fed up with being treated like dirt by their adults, when they meet they immediately hit it off and quickly become firm friends. Ned is used to travelling around as Mr Sprottle’s assistant and when his boss is forced to stay at the inn because he becomes ill, he has no idea what to do with his time – meaning that he is at Lil’s disposal when she starts to come up with her plans. As he is drawn into her schemes, she asks more and more of him, making their relationship quite one-sided, but such is the pleasure he derives from finally having a friend that he is more than happy to comply.

Although most young readers are unlikely to be familiar with the raven from Joan Aiken’s Arabel and Mortimer stories, crow Scratchy very much put me in mind of him and there are some wonderful illustrations of him and the other characters throughout the book, which will hook in many readers looking for books with pictures in, as – sadly – they are in short supply for the intended audience. These, in addition to the humour throughout the story and most of the chapters being fairly short, will make this a great independent read for most children in Years 5 and 6.

I really enjoyed this and will be keeping an eye out for more titles written by Loretta Schauer, who is better known for her illustrative work. My huge thanks go to Andersen press and to Net Galley for my virtual advance read. The Legend of Ghastly Jack Crowheart publishes 5th October.