Review: Ghosts of Greenglass House: A Greenglass House Story #2 by Kate Milford

SiriusB Reviews / B Reviews Category / Book ReviewsFantasy / Greenglass House / middle grade / mystery / POC / Smugglers1 Comments

Welcome to the irresistible world of Greenglass House, where thirteen-year-old Milo is spending the winter holidays stuck in a house full of strange guests who are not what they seem. There are fresh clues to uncover as friends old and new join in his search for a mysterious map and a famous smuggler’s lost haul.

Sure to thrill both fans and newcomers, this smart, suspenseful tale offers ghosts, friendships, and a cast of unforgettable characters, all wrapped up in a cozy mystery.

Review:

Dear Kate Milford,

I reviewed the first book in this series here at DA.  I found it very charming and enjoyable even if I was not the target audience for it. In this book a year has passed and we are back in the Greenglass House, basically a small hotel that Milo’s parents run and very often the guests in the hotel seem to have an interesting relationship with the law should we say.  Basically we met some smugglers and some thieves in the last book and two young thieves, Georgie and Clem, came back this time.

We learn that Georgie and Clem tried to do a job together (sort of a last hurrah for Clem before she gets married) and the job went wrong. I am not going to go into details of what exactly they tried to steal and what went wrong, because this is at the heart of the mystery in this book. I will just say that even the items that they did manage to find go missing while they are staying at Greenglass House and this becomes another sub mystery for Milo and his friends to solve.

I really really liked visiting with Milo and his parents again. I enjoyed reading about Milo navigating adolescence in general and him being adopted and being of Chinese heritage specifically and I liked how the narrative continued to explore it here and I thought it was done with a light touch. I cannot stress it enough though, these series are written for middle grade kids. I did give the first book few years ago to a child in my family and she enjoyed it well enough, but I am looking at it with the adult lenses so I cannot be sure if a child will like it as much as I did.

I do not recommend reading this book before the first one, not only the main characters get some character development (not a lot, but they do develop somewhat in my opinion), but also the fantasy storyline of the book definitely gets some continuation and even some closure (I think it will be too much of the spoiler to talk about fantasy storyline actually).

The main beats of the mystery are similar to the first book, even if the mystery itself is different it still basically about finding the hidden and lost things in the house, I think.  While it was comforting in a way, I am not sure if I will read the next book, because it may become too predictable for me, but maybe a child reader will still enjoy it just as much?

I also thought that too many new characters were introduced and I did not really care for most of them, just one had potential to me because this person may establish more permanent connection to one of the characters I already liked ;-).

Grade: B

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Sirius

Sirius started reading books when she was four and reading and discussing books is still her favorite hobby. One of her very favorite gay romances is Tamara Allen’s Whistling in the Dark. In fact, she loves every book written by Tamara Allen. Amongst her other favorite romance writers are Ginn Hale, Nicole Kimberling, Josephine Myles, Taylor V. Donovan and many others. Sirius’ other favorite genres are scifi, mystery and Russian classics. Sirius also loves travelling, watching movies and long slow walks.

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