Summary: With a dad who disappeared years ago and a mother who’s too busy to parent, Emmy’s shipped off to Wellsworth, a prestigious English boarding school. But then she finds a box of mysterious medallions in the attic of her home–medallions that belonged to her father who may have gone to Wellsworth.
When she arrives at school, she finds the symbols from the medallions etched into walls and books, which leads Emmy and her new friends to Wellsworth’s secret society: The Order of Black Hollow Lane. Emmy thinks that the society had something to do with her dad’s disappearance, and that there may be more than just dark secrets in the halls of Wellsworth.
Thoughts: It didn’t take me very long to become absorbed within this story. I wasn’t planning on finishing it the same day that I started it, but… Once you get going, it is really difficult to put down. Halfway through the book, I started getting some pretty strong Harry Potter vibes. By the end of the book, those vibes were even stronger, and I’d be really surprised if Harry Potter hadn’t influenced Julia Nobel in some way.
I would definitely compare this book to a non-magical, gender-reversed Harry Potter world. There are so many similarities: Being sent to an English boarding school, a rag-tag trio of best friends who are very different personalities, absent parents, the main character fighting off a dangerous group of people who are part of a secret society, our main character becoming the star player in her sport, etc. There are plenty of more examples, but those were the ones at the top of my head.
As in every good series, there are many questions left unanswered at the end of the book that you just HAVE to keep reading the series. I haven’t felt the need to commit to a new series in quite a while, but I will definitely be following along as new books are released.
Abbi Lee Books 