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Murder, Magic, and What We Wore

Murder, Magic, and What We Wore

Murder, Magic, and What We Wore by Kelly Jones is a fast-paced novel about a young Annis Whitworth who tries desperately to make her own way in a difficult situation in which she, for the first time, must work very hard.

Plot Summary:

Annis Whitworth is young women living in London just after its war with France. Annis lives alone with her aunt Cassia Whitworth, her father’s sister because her father has always traveled for “business”, shall we say, a lot and her mother died when Annis was about two years old. Annis knows about her father’s job no matter how clueless her aunt and her father think she is. Her father is a spy for England. England still wants spies on France just in case Napoleon gets any ideas or escapes his captivity/prison cell. One morning, early in the novel, Annis and Aunt Cassia find out her father has died in a carriage accident. (Annis classifies this as suspicious.) She decides she should become a spy as well so that she 1) can fight crime and 2) can find out the details of her father’s mysterious death. She and her aunt find out shortly that her all her father’s soldier compensation, his pay, has been stolen. The real bad news is that this was the money they were living on. This was the money that payed the expenses on their house, payed the servants, and payed for the expensive lifestyle they had grown so dearly accustomed to. She and Cassia are forced to leave their home to a smaller town just outside of London with Annis’ best friend and one of the maids at the house, Millie. Aunt Cassia, Annis, and Millie have to find out a way to live and make money. Annis searches frantically for solutions and tries to put these desperately into action. Along the way, she find more details about her father’s death, mysteries among aristocratic families who were once her friends, and about Fog. (Fog is a criminal in the city who the spies are trying to unmask.) Will Annis, Cassia, and Millie find a solution or will they live the rest of their lives in sorrow in the small town just outside of their dream world?

Author Praise and Critique:

Kelly Jones and real spies think alike in Murder, Magic, and What We Wore. She allows you to do the same throughout the novel by leaving clues here and there to help you solve the mystery along with Annis and Millie. The fashion in this book is described just as well as the setting. The magic element in this book is when Annis discovers she can sew glamours. (Glamours and pieces of clothing that can change a person into a completely different person when the said person is wearing the piece of clothing. It changes your looks, voice, and mannerisms, but not your shoes.) When Annis realizes this talent, she becomes determined for this talent to be part of the solution to their financial difficulties. This element of magic is a very big part of the novel and is used very well to promote the well-developed plot and characters, most of the time. The glamours are very difficult to understand at first because the book has to be a little vague so that the readers do not solve the mystery right away or just after they begin reading the book.

Rating and Reasoning:

I rate this book 4 stars because it was a great book to read with a very well-developed plot and an interesting cast of characters, but the glamours could have been explained a little better in the beginning of the book to avoid some confusion later in the novel.

Audience: 6th, 7th, and 8th graders
Publisher: Knopf Books
Date Published: September 2017
ISBN: 9780553535211
Format: Hardcover
Genre: Fantasy


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