Jordan Stratford

I enjoyed this one only slightly less than the first book in the series, but it did feel a bit more scattered. The mystery was good! The history is about as accurate as you can get when you’re writing for nine-year-olds! The characters were lovely and the literary references were delightful! The humour was strong and the daring-do was wonderful! But Stratford’s expanded the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency from the core duo, bringing in a handful more girls who are connected to Ada show more Lovelace and Mary Shelley, and while they all played a part in solving the mystery, he had trouble balancing them, I think. Definitely still recommending this series at work, though, especially to the girls I can already tell will be lifelong bookworms.

6.5/10 show less

This book is one of the most fun depictions of a genius kid (Ada Byron, aka Ada Lovelace). She's quite a character--completely clueless about social interaction, and yet ten steps ahead of everybody else. This author has a gift for writing hilarious banter and situations.

It's an interesting plus that these characters are at least vaguely historical (the back of the book has a fascinating section explaining where the idea of Percy, Mary, Ada, Charles, etc. come from). They weren't all show more together historically like this, but the fact that they were real people and many of them did at least have some real connection to each other added a bit to the charm of the story.

But despite its historical semi-plausibility, Ada is an over-the-top character who is impossible to take seriously, so the book puts itself firmly in the tongue-in-cheek story genre. Given that, I'm not sure why I was so bothered by the conclusion where something very unlikely happens with Ada's balloon. (That shouldn't be a spoiler; you knew when the story opened with a big balloon that something had to happen to it, and you probably also looked at the picture on the cover.)

As a detective story, it's not very sophisticated. I'm pretty sure if you know what "mesmerism" is you'd figure who did it and how long before Ada did. (Also, how does a pendant "have the property of mesmerism"? This is clearly not a hard-nosed detective story.) But I didn't enjoy this because it was a detective story; I enjoyed it because of Ada (and to a lesser extent the other characters).

I first picked up this book because our girls (10 and 7) have grown fascinated by detective stories, and they loved it. Maybe they liked it better because they didn't know what "mesmerism" was going into the story, but honestly, it was a lot of fun for me and them. show less

A fairly active mystery, with sneaking, interviews, and odd contraptions. This is the first of the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency books I have read and it would have been a benefit to have read others, I believe, as there were references to previous cases.

I enjoyed the different characters of Ada and Mary. I felt that Ada was the focal point of this book with Mary following. I felt that both characters were distinct and came off well. It took no time to get to know their mannerisms and feel show more like I understood them.

The historical details were fun, (Queen Victoria really did have a little Spaniel named Dash, though he was tri-colour), but I don't think any historical understanding is needed to follow the story. There are short facts at the end that could be a good launch point into famous figures in literature. show less

Captivating from the beginning, this middle grade novel is mystery, historical fiction, and girl power all wrapped up together. Featuring a pair of strong female leads, this novel shows how very far we have come in the last one hundred years. Stratford has very cleverly taken two very well known women and used a little creative license to imagine what it would have been like if Ada Byron, world's first computer programmer, and Mary Godwin, author of the world's first science fiction novel, show more had been friends. What would they have done together? Obviously create a clandestine detective agency! The language in this novel is so lovely and the constant push against the norms of expected female behaviour of the early 1800s demonstrates how girls have the ability to be more than society dictates. A strong novel for all of your middle graders. show less