Curse of the Specter Queen follows the journey of Samantha (Sam) Knox. Sam loved to solve clues, but the death of her father really scarred her. She is able to regain the exhilaration of solving that next clue with the help of childhood friends, Bennett and Joana, and a mysterious little black book. The book causes Sam to leave the comfort of her little bookshop in rural Illinois to travel to Dublin, Ireland. There she encounters the HellFire Club and the brothers of Solas Fior. Both groups are deeply tied to the book. By using her knowledge on book repair and ciphers, Sam discovers that the book holds the secrets of the curse of the Specter Queen. Sam works with Bennett and Joana to prevent the Specter Queen from being resurrected.
I liked the old, mystery feel of the book. Moke really embodied the type of writing and language I think you would find during this time period. The author also utilized a lot of literary devices such as personification and metaphors. I remember reading the book and being able to clearly note the author’s use of the devices. I wished that Alistair and Veronica’s, people Sam met on the ship that took her to Ireland, characters had been elaborated on a little bit more. Overall, I really enjoyed the book. It successfully reached out to the little adventurer in me.
One memorable thing about the book was the use of different ciphers. I thought that it was very interesting and cool that the author took the time to talk about different types of ciphers. She also nicely developed the clues used to solve the curse problem.
HCPL TeenScene's Read + Review 