Jacqueline Harvey, Alice-Miranda and the Christmas Mystery (Alice-Miranda #20), Penguin Australia, October 2023, 432 pp., RRP $16.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781761048944
Before Christmas, Alice-Miranda and her closest friends spend a few days at her home Highton Hall. Alice-Miranda Highton-Smith-Kennington-Jones (her name always makes me smile) comes from a family with plenty of money, goes to a private school as do all her friends, but they are all down-to-earth kids with realistic expectations of the world. The exception is Caprice who soon learns from the others that her egocentricity and rudeness is not appreciated.
Village Christmas decorations, stock from the family’s supermarket chain and other thefts are becoming more prevalent. Who’s behind them all? The group of friends, while also carrying out shopping trips, making Christmas treats and holding parties and fashion parades for themselves, set out to solve what’s going on. There’s a large group of characters apart from Alice-Miranda’s friends. Ellie and her supposed friend Hazel and Hazel’s brothers, Griffin, Sergey, Bronson, and other adults. I found it easy to keep track of them all though it may not be the case for younger readers who haven’t followed Alice-Miranda through any of her earlier adventures.
Jacqueline Harvey’s writing is fluid and her characters reflect compassion, resilience and kindness in the face of difficulties, as well as demonstrating that they have to think about others in their interactions. This, the 20th in her series about Alice-Miranda, is as enjoyable as the previous ones. Previous fans will thoroughly enjoy it, and I hope many new ones will discover the group. I wonder if the series will, or can, mature into a YA series.
Recommended.
Reviewed by Maureen Mann
