Rose Campion and the Stolen Secret

Rose Campion and the Stolen Secret by Lyn Gardner (Nosy Crow/Allen & Unwin)

PB RRP $14.99

ISBN 9780857634863

Reviewed by Anastasia Gonis

Rose is a girl full of life, love of adventure, and spontaneity. She is compassionate and loving.  Abandoned at the stage door of Campion’s Palace of Varieties as a baby, Thomas Campion has raised and loved her as his own child.

Rose adores Thomas, but secretly yearns to learn who her mother was and where she came from.

But Campion’s is a place ‘full of people with secrets’. All are aware that knowledge is a dangerous thing; that life can be snuffed out quickly when people know or reveal too much.

When the generous-hearted Rose allows Effie and Aurora, girls with deep and complex secrets of their own, into her life, there are incredible happenings, and astonishing links are revealed.

I loved this book! It is riveting reading; stimulating, exciting and imaginative. There is a strong storyline full of continuous mystery which holds the reader’s interest every second. The excellent characters and the secrets they hold, are wound together tightly with past events that are even more thrilling and macabre than the current events they are experiencing. Stories are linked to sub-stories in a continuous chain of involvement.

This brilliant novel shows how our circumstances don’t always reflect who we are, and in order to survive, how frequently life forces us to do things that are against our nature.

Olivia's First Term: Stage School

Olivia's First Term: Stage School by Lyn Gardner (Nosy Crow)

PB RRP $16.95

Reviewed by Dianne Bates

There are other books in this series about Olivia, daughter of Jack and sister to Eel, whose family has a circus background. Olivia is skilled in tightrope walking, which is her passion. Thus she is sorely disappointed when Jack takes her and Eel to enrol in a stage school. The school is run by the girls' maternal grandmother, Alicia Swan, who has previously cut all ties from her daughter and son-in-law. Now Olivia's mother is dead and Jack is desperate for his girls to have a home. Alicia accepts the girls into the school and Jack departs. The story then proceeds, telling of life for Olivia and Alice in Swan's Stage School.

This is an odd book insofar as the narrative viewpoint shifts constantly throughout the story. It's almost as much poor, talented Georgia's story, spoilt, rich, bitchy Katie's story and enthusiastic, gifted dancer Eel's story. Their stories, and the stories of other students such as the school captain Aeysha and Olivia's friend Tom are played out throughout the book.

As I read Olivia's First Term, I had a sense of reading a book by Enid Blyton. The story's characters are all 'types' with jealousies, infighting and occasional kindnesses depicted from the numerous students of the school. Olivia struggles to fit in as she has no stage talents: instead she rigs up a tightrope and finds joy from walking on it in secret. Meanwhile, Eel flourishes and is chosen to dance in front of the Queen, and Jack attempts to renew a relationship with the girls' grandmother.

An average read, the book is easy to read and would most likely maintain the interest of a reader aged from eight to twelve years.