In the Belly of the Bloodhound: Being an Account of a Particularly…

Do you see this L.A. Meyer? Me shaking my fist at your cliffhanger ending in my car last night although I saw it coming about ten minutes earlier. Honestly, can't Jacky catch a break? No wonder the series is up to 8 or so now. ( )

Didn't love this one as much as the previous--there's so much of Jacky's backstory in here, and it feels like the author just wanted to cram it into the series somewhere so here's the book to put it in. Many convenient plot elements help Jacky and her classmates out of difficult situations.

Still, adventure on the high seas! ( )

Yay, Jacky! ( )

- audiobook - Having narrowly escaped from the British Navy during the Battle of Trafalgar, Jacky flees back to Boston to hide out while her lawyer back in London tries to see what he can do about the bounty that has been placed on her head by the Navy. Thankfully, her old headmistress allows her to re-enroll in the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls. Life is back to boring normal for Jacky. She can't hang out at the docks or sing in the bars because she might be spotted by British sailors, but she gets to spend time with her best friend Amy. All of that changes, however, when she and all of her classmates are kidnapped while on a field trip and packed into a slave ship, destined to be sold into the harems of princes and sheikhs in northern Africa.

This is my least favorite in the series so far. It wasn't bad, but it did seem to drag on and on, and the end of the book, which should have been action-packed, was interspersed with Jacky telling random stories of her childhood on the streets of London. They were good stories, but they didn't belong there. I think this book would have been better served by cleaning it up and adding the beginning of the next book onto the end. It's still a great series, of course; this one just isn't as good as the previous books. ( )

This book was different than the others before it because Jacky has to rely on other girls. (Which she's definitely not used to) I really enjoyed getting to know more about the ladies of the Lawson Peabody; some of them had some pretty interesting backstories. I have to say that I wasn't expecting the ending, and it made me laugh. ( )