The Secret of White Stone Gate (Order of Black Hollow Lane, Book 2)

Written by Julia Nobel

Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

978-1-7282-2003-1

304 pp.

Ages 8-14

March 2020

After a tumultuous first year at Wellsworth boarding school in England (see my review of The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane), Emmy is both excited and apprehensive about returning after summer holidays. She is glad to be reconnecting with her friends Lola and Jack but she knows that her intention to find her long-missing father may put her and her friends in danger, again, with the mysterious and treacherous secret society known as the Order of Black Hollow Lane.

Several things make this year at Wellsworth a little different. First, twelve-year-old Emmy has been instructed to have her mom’s cousin Lucy, a snarky woman who breeds Chinese crested dogs and aspires for her and husband Harold to be in every posh club in London, including the Thackery Club, act as unofficial guardian.  Secondly, she hides the all-important Order's medallions–though the Order has been told they were all destroyed–in a safety deposit box at the Royal Bank of London. Thirdly, new schoolmates at Wellsworth include Jack's new roommate Sam, for whom Emmy is feeling a little fluttery, and Jack's little brother Oliver who is having a hard time fitting in.

After the funds from the Wellsworth Annual Charity Supper and fundraiser are discovered in Lola's dresser and she is expelled, Emmy learns that the Order has set up Lola and will continue to do harm unless Emmy tells them where her father is. Sadly, Emmy does not know where Thomas Allyn is and worse yet, Lucy is hearing rumours about Emmy and her friends from her club acquaintances that suggest the young people are troublemakers. Sam agrees to go undercover and befriend Brynn, Lola's nasty cousin and Order member, to help Emmy and Jack. But after two violent assaults on her friends, Emmy wonders if she can find her father and save her friends before it's too late.

Before Wellsworth, Emmy may have lived with her mom, a parenting expert, but she lacked family. Her mother is far too wrapped up in her career and purporting to always know what's best for her daughter, including connecting her with a selfish cousin who cares little for Emmy, but who fails to listen to Emmy, particularly in regards to her father. (It's easy not to like Emmy's mom and Lucy.) It's not surprising that Emmy wants to learn more about her father, though when she discovers he is alive, she has mixed feelings about the man who seems to want to protect her at all costs but who chose to leave years ago. Because of the confusing relationships with her parents, Emmy inevitably finds the family she needs with her friends at Wellsworth. And she has mystery upon mystery to solve with her allies.

Julia Nobel's first book in the Order of Black Hollow Lane series, The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane, is a finalist for the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize and a nominee for the Forest of Reading's Silver Birch Fiction award so young readers will be pleased to know that The Secret of White Stone Gate is available to continue Emmy's story. There's a new mystery, new characters, and more nefarious actions perpetrated by the Order but Emmy is getting closer to her father and helping him while making a real life for herself at Wellsworth. Fortunately, the mystery must continue with a third book if we are to learn whether Emmy and her friends will be able to keep the treasures of Black Hollow Lane from falling into the hands of the Order. No news yet on Book 3 but I'm sure it won't be a secret for long.

The Mystery of the Black Hollow Lane (Order of Black Hollow Lane, Book 1)

Written by Julia Nobel

Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

978-1-4926-6464-2

320 pp.

Ages 8-14

2019

For a parenting guru, Emmy Willick’s mom seems to relinquish much of her responsibilities, telling her daughter that she always knows what’s best for her (does she?) when sending her an English boarding school, Wellsworth.  But before Emmy heads out, she uncovers a metal box with 12 medallions with a note from her father, Thomas Allyn, who’d left when Emmy was three. As her parents met in England, Emmy is determined to use the opportunity at Wellsworth to learn as much about him as she can.

At Wellsworth, she meets Lola Boyd, her housemistress’s daughter, and Jack Galt with whom she becomes fast friends. Because she has had no schooling in Latin, she is encouraged by Madam Boyd to join the Latin Society, a club headed by Master Larraby.  When the trio begin to study the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and learn that Wellsworth Hall used to be Blacehol Abbey, Emmy discovers a secret society called the Order of Black Hollow Lane using the same symbol as the Latin Society, a skull with a cross and dagger. But Jack tries to dissuade her against learning about the Order to which his father and older brothers, as well as Lola’s nasty cousin Brynn, belong and which Jack believes is dangerous.

After being slipped several old messages ostensibly from the files of Thomas Allyn, Emmy realizes that her father, the school and the Order of Black Hollow Lane are all tied together. But what Emmy doesn’t know is how and why.

Boarding schools are a favourite location to set mysteries, just as English countryside villages are home to so many cozies. Schools like Wellsworth are ripe with a myriad of characters, good and bad and some misunderstood, from among their student and adult populations. There are roomies, classmates, teachers, administrators, custodians and more in these enclaves of apparent decorum. Their relationships are a tangled web of support, bullying, distrust, affection and malevolence. For Emmy, whose self-absorbed mother loves to dictate but not engage and without a father present in her life, Wellsworth offers her an opportunity to find family. She may be driven to find her father and have him become part of her life, if she can, but with Lola and Jack and a gaggle of other characters who may be of assistance in their own ways, Emmy is able to make a new life and solve a mystery or two.

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Tomorrow I review The Secret of White Stone Gate, Book 2 in the Order of Black Hollow Lane series.