Another page-turner! Wonderful storytelling! Great fun!

I love these characters.

Great armchair travel in this book and in this series.

One thing I was disappointed about in this book is that the relationship dynamics seemed too close to the same as they were in the first three books. What I saw seemed to be primarily working relationships. Given that the kids were adopted I was hoping for a cozier family feel. There is a bit of that but way too little for my taste. There is a character who is new (they were an off the page character up until now) but it’s not only because of them but because of all of the kids that I have this book still on my orphan related shelf. Given the background of all of the kids I was hoping there would be more focus on the newly formed family.

You have to suspend disbelief to enjoy this series but the characters & their relationships and the various settings make it easy for me to do that.

There is one aspect about what is going on in this particular story that was difficult to figure out what was going on. I think it’s still a mystery, and the last line in the book is chilling. Because I want to find out what it means I’m even more eager to read book 5 than I thought I would be. BIG SPOILER: DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE BOOK BUT MIGHT READ THE BOOK: I *think* I read it all carefully and something is off about the Robert storyline and about Robert. There is one explanation I can think of but I don’t think that’s it. Anything else doesn’t make complete sense, at least not to me. I hope that Mother’s heart doesn’t get broken. I still hate the moniker Mother.

4-1/2 stars ( )