When 11-year-old Alice witnesses her father’s murder, she flees to the city fearing for her life. The murderers are agents of the Queen. Who knows? Maybe they are after her as well. Not to mention that she knows who they are.
She ends up disguising herself as a boy among the choirboys, who come to her aid upon hearing some of her circumstances. Some. The truth never fully reveals itself, until Alice realizes that the assassins may know where she is…..and are still looking for her.
Truth be told, I think the title is a little dramatic for a children’s book. I know you are probably raring to hand a book about a murder to your child, BUT this is actually a very sweet book. With the murder frustratingly nondescript, it enlarges the age range of enjoyability quite a lot.
The mystery was not a very good one. The main question should have been ‘Why was my father murdered?’, but it was never very clear that they actually came to a conclusion on that.
So this book was surprisingly clean for a ‘murder story’, the only possible problem being that it was a bit suspenseful when Alice realizes the murderers are after her.
Oh, and it was quite funny that the speech of the priests in the church is not all that clean for a priest. Not exactly swearing, but you would think they would take an offence at saying the Lord’s name in vain…..
All in all, the book was mostly well written. If you use Goodreads, all the readers of the book gave it a very high rating, averaging between 4 and 5 stars, which is very unusual.
Overall Rating: 4/5
Violence: 3/10
Language: 1/10
Innappropriateness/Romance: 1/10
Audience: Ages 10 and up (as long as they can handle a little suspense; Alice’s fear is very plausible)
Once Upon a Time 