Note: Kristin reads and reviews both Christian and secular fiction on A Simply Enchanted Life. Out of respect for my readers, I am including a content review. This content review will help you decide whether this book is suitable for you.
Christian or Secular: Secular
ASEL Rating: no profanity, violence, bedroom scenes, or other content that could otherwise be considered disturbing.
Content to be aware of: Nancy’s father is drugged and she fears for his life. I chose to mark this book as “non-violent” due to the level of writing at which it is presented. There is nothing disturbing or graphically violent about this book.
Suggested Age: 8+
The Hidden Staircase by Carolyn KeeneContent Rating:
Genres: Fiction, General, Mysteries & Detective Stories, Young Adult
Series: Nancy Drew
Pages: 182
After receiving a call from her friend Helen Corning, Nancy agrees to help solve a baffling mystery. Helen’s Aunt Rosemary has been living with her mother at the old family mansion, and they have noticed many strange things. They have heard music, thumps, and creaking noises at night, and seen eerie shadows on the walls. Could the house be haunted?
Just as soon as she hangs up the phone, a strange man visits Nancy’s house to warn her and her father that they are in danger because of a case he is working on buying property for a railroad company. This warning leads Nancy and her father Carson to search for the missing Willie Wharton, a landowner, who can prove he signed away his land to the railroad and save the railroad from a lawsuit. Will Nancy be able to find the missing landowner and discover how these mysteries are related?
Nancy does it again! I am really enjoying the trip down memory lane with this series. Nancy is graceful, kind, intelligent and capable. I love it! I mentioned before that Nancy is such a great role model for young ladies and I stick by that.
Some could say that Nancy sets the standard too high for young women to follow. However, I would say that these books were written to prove that young women could do anything they set their mind to. They were capable of changing a tire, solving a case and having incredible wit.
These books are rather juvenile in that the violence is non-graphic and the criminals are fairly harmless. I mean, they may scare someone or even give a thump on the head. But you aren’t likely to see blood and gore in these books. That’s part of the appeal for me. They’re almost so tacky that you can’t help but be sucked into the sheer simplicity of it.
I wish that things were still this simple. It amazes me how much more graphic books are, even for young kids these days. I guess this is true of all of our entertainment. I mean, just compare Adam West’s Batman to Christian Bales’. In one, you have cheesy sound effects and a big POW written on the screen while the other strives for realism. Not that I’m bashing realism in any way. But, sometimes I miss how simple things were for me when I was a kid reading Nancy Drew. Before everything was so realistic. Before I knew how dark the world was.
I didn’t like this book quite as much as the first. Predictability is to be expected in this series so I really didn’t take that into consideration when choosing the rating. I just thought a few of the situations in this book weren’t explained as well as I would have liked. Like how the perpetrator moved the couch or opened the hidden staircases without anyone hearing but Nancy opened them and created a mess. A loud mess.
Oh, one last thing…Nancy goes on a date in this book and it’s not with Ned! I don’t remember Nancy dating anyone in the original series except for Ned. So, I was rather surprised! I also thought George and Bess were present from the start but I’ve yet to see them in the series. I’m kind of excited for them to show up! It’s funny how my mind remembers them always being there and apparently, they’re not!
I hope you’ll join me for the next book in the series, The Bungalow Mystery!
The Bungalow Mystery by Carolyn KeeneGenres: Action & Adventure, Fiction, General, Girls & Women, Mysteries & Detective Stories, Young Adult
Pages: 204
While driving a motorboat around the Twin Lakes, Nancy and her friend Helen get caught in a dangerous storm. Luckily, they are rescued by another teenage girl in a rowboat. They soon learn that their rescuer is Laura Pendleton, whose mother has recently having passed away. Laura has come to meet up with her new guardians, but something isn’t quite right about them. Nancy investigates the situation, and soon she stumbles upon a shocking surprise in the cellar of a bungalow!
About Carolyn Keene
Carolyn Keene and Franklin W. Dixon are the pseudonyms under which many ghostwriters penned the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series, respectively. Both series were created by Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate book packaging firm, in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Stratemeyer’s daughter, Harriet, and syndicate writer Mildred Wirt Benson were the two people primarily responsible for bringing the iconic character of Nancy Drew to life in the minds and hearts of millions of readers around the world.
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