This is a large series already, and further books are coming out, so signs only suggest that it's a popular one. In this entrant we're a budding young ghost hunter, assigned to solve the spookiness at a manor house. Every page we get a sliver of the plot and a puzzle, which actually (surprisingly well at times) makes the plot reveal itself through our endeavours. The first chapter here is to try and help a phantom deer, and the quest we undertake is for some ancestral lockets – we don't as such have to sort out where they are as if this was an old-fashioned game book, but certainly we lack the details of the story if we don't hack away at the mini sudoku, word searches, and maths and number puzzles that we get at every turn.

I think at times the creator of these books has been on a hiding for nothing – if the plot is too good it's an annoyance the puzzles turn up, if the plot is too weak we're not going to buy another brain-testing volume. Here I think the balance is fine – some of the puzzles are dead easy, for one, and generally they cycle round again and again for us to be cognisant with them (which makes it all the more annoying to see the sudoku rules so often…). It's not a fabulous, unforgettable plot, and we can read it as a story on the whole without getting everything correct, but the way the whole thing is put into chapters and blocks of puzzles means our brains aren't frazzled by the end – this has save points, if you like. I wouldn't buy this as a puzzle book – the tasks aren't at all strong enough, and I wouldn't buy this as a story – the thing is flimsy and then some. But combine the two aspects of it all and it's perfectly fine and engaging and yet a further four stars from me for titles in this franchise.

Really enjoyed this puzzle book, it was a great way of sneaking in some learning whilst having fun. There was a fun adventure and at the end we enjoyed the finding the secret code which unlocked a bonus content. I would definitely recommend this as a present for someone.

This book was so much fun! Not only did my kids enjoy solving the puzzles, but I did too! This was such a nostalgic book for me. The spooky settings and the fun problems to solve really meant you could escape into this book. Would highly recommend.

Puzzle Quest: Ghost Hunter is a book featuring fun puzzle-style games for children to read and play, with a theme of ghost hunting and supernatural elements. I really liked how it had a theme and an overall goal of finding all the clues, and I liked that there were note pages for the reader to write their clues in. The typography and imagery was lovely and I tried and enjoyed a few of the puzzles. I would definitely recommend this (and others in the series) to anyone interested in ghosts and/or puzzles, no matter what age!