I am rather excited to be delving into today’s topic as it comes from the current series, Nancy Drew Diaries and the Diaries series played a big part in my becoming the Nancy Drew fan I am today. The very first Nancy Drew Diaries book I listened to and the very first Nancy Drew book I reviewed came from this series, the Christmas special, titled A Nancy Drew Christmas.
It was a fun book that sucked me in and made me want to know more about this take on the famous girl detective. For a while, I would bounce between a Diaries book and a classic Nancy Drew audiobook. I know there are many many many other series and I haven’t checked them out all yet so some of the years for this year such as the previous review and the next are me tipping my toes into other Nancy Drew series.
Cover
One of my favorite parts of the Nancy Drew Diaries books is the gorgeous covers as they are so inviting and make you want to know what is happening within the book. This cover does a good job of that as the story deals with a “ghost” haunting an old inn and Nancy holding a candle exploring the inn makes one curious about what the young detective is looking for. As much as I love this cover and the covers for the Diaries in general, I will agree with a complaint I saw on the website, Bargain Bin Sleuth that the artwork does tend to make Nance look younger than she is. It’s a fair and legitimate complaint as she looks closer to a preteen than the high schooler she is and I believe that she’s meant to be a high schooler as the book, Sabotage at Willow Woods does feature her in school in one chapter.
Still, I find that to be a rather minor complaint as the artwork is fantastic and does a great job of grabbing your eye making you curious as to what Nancy is going to get into.
Narrator
Jorjeana Marie
This lady right here is why I love Nancy Drew, she is in my top three favorite performers who have played Nancy Drew alongside Emma Roberts and Kennedy McMann. The Diaries books are presented in a first-person POV with each book opening and closing with Nance writing in her diary about the case she is working on, hence the name of the series. Marie delivers a wonderful take on Nancy Drew in each audiobook in the series selling her take of Nancy as smart, and brave while also sometimes feeling a bit timid. A perfect example of this is when Nancy is called up in this book to help partake in a dress rehearsal for a wedding and you can sense the nervousness in her voice as she explains she’s good at solving cases but not so great at having the spotlight on her. On the other end of the spectrum, you can hear how smart and self-assured Nancy is when she has deduced who the culprit is and lays out in detail what they had done and why they had done it. It’s a great take on the young detective that makes me excited to listen to the Diaries and even when I’m just reading I hear her voice when reading Nancy’s dialogue.
The Plot
The plot is rather simple and as you can probably figure the ghost doesn’t actually exist but the idea is still intriguing as haunted inns are a popular thing.
This is something the book touches upon as Nancy, Bess, and George are there for a wedding for a cousin of Bess and it highlights how people like to be scared.
There is a lot of truth to this as people are drawn to places that are supposedly haunted in the hopes of catching even the tiniest glimpse of a ghost. Taking a gander at this a bit further, we can look at where this book is set, South Carolina. It may be a haunted state you’d think of as I’m sure many minds would go to somewhere such as New Orleans but considering its history, it makes sense that would be considered rather haunted as the Travel Channel website highlights even if it is only listed as the 34th most haunted state. Â
The book does play with the idea of the past and once you find out why the ghost is doing the things, he’s doing it’s quite understandable. I do love the usage of hidden passages in the Inn to help sell the allusion of the ghost. Now, this ties back into the wedding as the thing that sets the mystery off in the first place is the disappearance of the wedding rings, and while at first, it seems as though the supposed ghost might have been behind this, the true culprit was just the story of the ghost and the passages within the Inn to commit all kinds of criminal activity, the ghost story just gave him the perfect cover. While ghosts may not exist in this version of Nancy Drew, we will soon be looking at some where they do but this was a great read/listen that set the mood for the season.
My Final Thoughts
This might be one of my favorite entries in Nancy Drew Diaries, it does just about everything right to make the mystery work while also serving as a genuinely fun book. Join me next time as we look at an anthology of…
Ghost Stories
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