Nancy Drew - #3 Review

Nancy Drew - #3 "The Haunted Dollhouse"



Synopsis: It's Nostalgia Week in River Heights so everybody is wearing clothes from the 1930s and Nancy Drew is driving a 1930s roadster (loaned from a local antique car dealer) instead of her usual red hybrid. :3 Bess and George are in costume as well but George complains about having to go w/o technology for a week. xD

They go to city hall for speeches and an Emma Blavatsky is introduced as a partner in the whole event. :o She says that in honour of her puchasing an old mansion in the town recently, she's putting on display a dollhouse replica of the mansion she came into possession of. She also warns that it's believed to be haunted :O

OOOOooooOOoooOooOOOooo

>_>

xD

Nancy looks into it w/ a magnifying glass and is amazed at the level of detail inside it. She then notices that a thief doll is stealing one of the paintings inside the dollhouse! :O They get to the mansion and it turns out there WAS a break in and theft at the same time! :O Emma is there by the time they get there w/ the chief of police, and she begins speaking about ghosts and spirits which Nancy rolls her eyes at. Nancy wonders why a ghost would need to break a window to enter the mansion, or leave footprints? Emma responds by saying they controlled whoever did it. The chief believes that she's crazy. >_>

Nancy and friends go back to city hall where she tries to check the security camera but is told that it's broken. :o The dollhouse scene has now changed and it appears somebody is stealing a horse! :O

Nancy then takes Ned to the mansion near a famous tree that suddenly appeared in the dollhouse scene and they have a picnic that is rly an excuse for Nancy to make sure nobody is stealing horses! :O Suddenly Deidre (Nancy's HS dramuh nemesis who Nancy seems to be oblivious to her nemesisnessness... xD) shows up... riding a horse! :O She mocks Nancy, ignores her warnings and tries to hit on Ned (as is her wont >_>) She then goes to ride away but suddenly the masked thief from before shows up and spooks the horse, throwing her off! :O Nancy tells Ned to distract the thief and then gets on the horse to ride it away but she hits a snag and is thrown off and the thief escapes with the horse D:

She has a dream where she's a doll and trapped but then wakes up in her home w/ her housekeeper watching over her. :)

Nancy tries to talk to the police chief but he mocks her >_> She then takes a sleeping back and stays at city hall next to the doll house and at night she witnesses the dolls actually moving!!!!!!!!!! :O

DUN DUN DUNNNNNN

End Chapter 1 :o

Chapter 2! :D

The security guard comes rushing in hearing Nancy make some noises and prevents Nancy from cracking open the glass case surrounding the house to find out what's going on b/c it's private property. The police are called, but the police chief doesn't take any action against Nancy b/c he himself has wanted to break open that dollhouse too :O

The next day, Nancy, Bess and George go to the jewellry store that looked like what was in the doll house post the dolls moving and the scene changing o_o They browse when suddenly the same masked robber from before shows up, snatches a necklace and runs off :O Nancy chases after him but he vanishes :O Nancy finds tire tracks which continues to support her idea that this is not a ghost but a real person.

A random scene where the three heroines are at a soda shop and Deidre shows up to mock Nancy happens. >_>;;;

At night, Nancy attends a big town party on an old steamboat. :o She dances w/ Ned for a while but retires to the balcony to think about the mystery when Emma Blavatsky walks up next to her and tells her again of her believe in spirits and offers Nancy the chance to talk w/ them.. in a seance! :O dun dun dunnn >_>

Nancy takes her up on her offer and she and her friends go to Emma's mansion to do it :O Nancy remains skeptical the entire time and her thought boxes explain to us what Emma is doing to fool them the whole time the seance is going on :3

As they're leaving the house after the fake ghost appearance, Nancy explains to her friends what happened, and while she's explaining about the hidden crevices in the furniture, she realizes something about the dollhouse! :O They rush back to city hall and she looks under the dollhouse stand and finds a locker lodged underneath :O She again insists they take the display apart but the police chief shows up and won't let her because it is owned by Emma. :o Then they realize that the scene has changed and a doll of Nancy is lying dead on the ground next to the old mansion!!!!! :OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OH NOEEEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Chapter 3! :D

Of course this means Nancy must go to the old mansion to check out what's going on xD However, when they're almost there, her car runs out of gas, because Nancy has a tendency to get so wrapped up in a mystery she forgets to fill her car up, and the old car runs out of gas even faster than her new hybrid o_o Also she and her friends don't have cellphones to call for help because Nancy won't let them because it's Nostalgia Week -_-;; So they walk in the rain to the mansion where she's fated to die. They see a police car at the mansion, where the police chief had an officer watching the mansion just in case :O However, Nancy insists they go inside rather than radio for help, because she wants to take a look around first. When they get inside they see from a window that the police car is gone now and Nancy's old roadster is there, JUST LIKE IN THE DOLLHOUSE WHERE SHE WAS SHOWN AS DEAD! :OOOO

OH NOEEEZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ D:

Nancy insists on continuing and goes upstairs to find out more but Bess and George are grabbed from behind by the mysterious burgler! :O Nancy doesn't notice, cuz she's Nancy, and in the top floor room she finds all of the missing loot! And from the window she can see the horse that was stolen across the field under a bridge :O But as she looks, a shadowy figure approaches her from behind! :O

Meanwhile, Bess and George are locked in a room w/ the police officer knocked out cold :o George tells Bess to look for some way to call for help and Bess finds a large old-fashioned wall phone :O But before they can do nething, George is attacked by the burgler (who apparently locked himself IN the room w/ them) and calls for Bess to help! :O Bess rips the phone off the wall and knocks the Burgler out w/ it xDDDD

Back to Nancy now, who's figured out the mystery but suddenly a sekrit door opens in the wall near her! She follows the hidden staircase up and finds herself on the top balcony when suddenly somebody tries to push her off the roof! :O She fights the person off and unmasks her and it turns out to be... Emma Blavatsky! (of course >_>) She tells Nancy that she's broke and that if ppl believed the dollhouse was TRULY haunted, it would sell for a fortune, along w/ the book and film rights and she'd be rich... RICCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! MUHAHAHAHAHA... but first Nancy has to be dead... >_>;;; (ohyeahalsoshesmuggledhernephewintothecountrytohideinsidethedollhousedisplaythewholetimewithmagnets >__> also she refilled Nancy's car w/ gas and drove it to the house and then ran back in to kill her >______________>)

e_e

MOVING ON

Nancy is shocked that Emma confessed but Emma says she only did so b/c Nancy will be dead neways! MUHAHAHAHA >_> She then tries to push Nancy off but fails and falls off herself! :O Nancy then helps her up and Emma promises to go peacefully :o However, AS Nancy brings her down the staircase she betrays her and tries to kill Nancy again! :O She sees her nephew below and says they can still bring Nancy to the roof and throw her off O_O;;; BUt her nephew is w/ Bess, George and the police chief and has been arrested! :O Bess and George explain that using their tech and magical mechanical powers, they fixed up the antique phone to be able to call the police chief and he came here just in time! They arrest Emma and all is good w/ the world! Nancy says that George and Bess are so amazing they should start their own detective agency (or at least commission themselves off to repair superhero cars and space stations and invisible jets >_> )

The next day, Nostalgia Week is over, and George is so happy to get all her gadgets back but then freaks out when Bess puts a George shaped doll on her shoulder to freak her out O_O;;; Everybody has a good laugh and the credits roll!

DOOO DOOO DOOOOO DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! (that was supposed to be whacky 70s sitcom ending music >_>)


Review: HOLY CRUMBS WHERE TO START!? O_O;;;;; xDDD Actually I found this book quite fun! At least in that there's a lot of running around, the lack of gadgets made things a LITTLE more interesting, even if it made no sense (more on that later) and George and Bess have a lot of amazing scenes. xD Plus, it's another fairplay mystery, and you could figure this one out from the pieces provided... THO...

what threw me was the magnets. I knew it HAD to be magnets.. but the dolls move like REAL PEOPLE and magnets can't do THAT -_- nor could magnets change the ENTIRE SCENE and turn a mansion into a jewellry shop... or make dolls APPEAR suddenly (like the Nancy Drew doll) and THAT really bugged me... I figured out the mystery cuz it's the ONLY WAY it could be... but nothing about it MADE SENSE >_<;;;

Talking about not making sense, the big reveal... HOLY WTF (i need to say something different than holy crumbs all the time XD which is my new catchphrase of the month >_> ) :o Okay, so it's another villain that is doing crazy things cuz they're broke... that's.. fine. >_> I mean it's the plot of the first book and it becomes the plot of MANY of the books later too xD But... there's SO MANY WAYS this could have gone wrong... for one... what if her nephew had been caught trying to steal the horse (he almost was, Nancy just got unlucky and fell off the horse and Ned was too crappy to actually TACKLE him when they were next to each other xD) Or what if he hadn't been successful stealing the jewels? (I'm shocked that even tho the chief had the same thoughts as Nancy he didn't have police near that jewellry store -__-) or he had been caught in the car fleeing the store? And how did he get the car THERE w/o Nancy noticing thru the storefront? It just MAGICALLY APPEARED to get him away and then all Nancy had to prove a car was there was tire tracks? o_O also in broad daylight aren't there PEOPLE ON THE STREET who would see the guy and therefore convince the chief that Nancy is NOT crazy and that it's NOT a ghost!?

And do ppl often mistake guys wearing a ski mask as being ghosts? o_O

Emma as the bad guy was also RLY obv cuz she shows up that much and clearly has a lot invested in ppl believing the dollhouse was haunted.

I have no idea how her grown adult nephew fit inside that little piller supporting the dollhouse or got OUT of there w/o Nancy, or the security guard, or the police chief noticing, EVER. Esp when the dollhouse was on display in front of everybody at city hall. How long was he IN there!?

Was Emma FEEDING the horse? How did she manage to hide a horse on that property when the police keep searching it cuz it's the house in the dollhouse scene where crimes keep being shown? o_O How do you hide a horse underneath a bridge from everybody!? o_O Don't horses sometimes make noises?!?

And how did she predict that Nancy would run out of gas? And why would she KNOW this beforehand so she had gas to bring w/ her to refill the car!? And if she didn't plan this, then she improvised REALLY REALLY FAST... cuz she got OUT of the house, somehow, got into the car, drove it to the mansion, got rid of the police car, and then ran upstairs to kill Nancy O_O She's very active for an old woman! She should be commercials for vitamin supplements O_O;;

And her nephew... after kidnapping Bess and George and putting them in the same room you have the unconscious cop... WHY WOULD YOU LOCK YOURSELF IN THE ROOM WITH THEM!? Was he planning to KILL them? And why would you wait for them to wake up AND THEN TRY TO KILL THEM!? If not.. wtf was he doing!? (there's another thought but honestly I don't think a book where the audience is for kids and not a DC "for kids" would imply that... so.. yeah.. besides... wouldn't you tie them up at least? >_> ) It's just... RAWRRRRR xD You bad guys DESERVED TO BE CAUGHT!

And I just LOVEEEEE how they are SUCH sticklers to the rules of fight club Nostalgia Week that they can't even do things that could.. y'know.. save their lives... Like bring cellphones JUST IN CASE.. or a flashlight... or use the internet or computers to research the dollhouse like George wanted to. xD Nancy scolds George saying that ppl solved mysteries before technology. Well... sort of... how many do you think were wrong or false arrests, or that they just COULDN'T solve xD Also.. you're also assuming that the BAD GUYS PLAY BY THE SAME RULES! Given that they use modern cars and such to commit crimes, it's pretty obvious THEY DO NOT... srsly... Nancy is lucky that her need to follow the rules didn't kill her >_>;; xD

MIND YOU

Nancy's ability to not pay attention to her well being is also extremely dangerous and truly legendary here xD After figuring out the mystery, she figures it's a good idea to go up a suddenly opened door that leads to the roof where the dollhouse (and by now she KNOWS why it keeps predicting things) says she'll die... and doesn't watch her back. She's only lucky that Emma was so tired from all her running around and hiding of cars xD

Emma is a great supervillain tho xD Srsly.. she's like a Batman villain... needlessly complicated plans... gimmicks to predict and telegraph her plans... incompetent sidekicks xD I'm shocked she didn't say "good help is so hard to find these days" at the end (before shooting her nephew w/ a joker "bang!" gun >_> )

But srsly, she's part of why I like the story.. cuz she's such a great mUHAHAHAHA over the top supervillain (who doesn't give up on trying to kill the hero after her first try fails xD silly trusting Nancy >_> ) .. .I'd actually rly like it if she returned.. she seems like a good foil for Nancy and I like the way she thinks xD

The other part is just how goofy the whole thing is xD I mean it's bad, but it's FUN bad... the plot makes sense, in that sure it's POSSIBLE... just... when you think about how it could actually be implemented it's just so silly xD All the coincidences and remarkable feats of dexterity and endurance by the bad guys necessary and the incompetence of the police xD It rly is a Batman story xDDDD

Plus, having Nancy romp around in the old roadster in the type of outfit she was in in the original books, was cute... a little nostalgic trip for 90 year old fans xD ... and girls who grew up reading the originals :3 (and not the remakes of the originals)

And George and Bess are rly at their best here! Esp Bess... 30s TELEPHONE-FU! WHACK! xDD i just love the effectiveness of the 3 of them as heroes. There's no panicky or typical girl flailiy or crying or other stuff when they're kidnapped. What? Bad guy? RIP THE PHONE OFF THE WALL AND BEAT HIM W/ IT! xDDD <333

So much lurve xD Plus they manage to fix the thing AFTER AND somehow dial the police chief w/ it xDD (he srsly is like the only cop in River Heights too >_> except for the guy he sent who got knocked out... maybe it was a prototype police bot or something o_O He never appears to wake up xD)

<3

And the ending was cute too just cuz,... Nancy's right.. HER FRIENDS ROCK!! Which is the other thing, I LOVE how much they're a team in this series and Bess and George aren't just side chars or meant to be the serious tomboy/silly femme girl combo... they rly are EXTREMELY useful and full heroes in their own right :D And this episode is a great example of that and another reason why I love it. xD Plus, I love that they show Nancy as being strong, focused and determined.. and she isn't afraid of threat of death either :D She's not just some girl playing at hero, she's a freaking hero >:D And that's ultimately why I love this series so much, and this book is a great early example of the strength and temerity of the 3 leads :D

And ultimately... I mean... it's fun... and isn't that what counts? xD I mean we put up w/ Batman plots that make less sense xD (or Supergirl plots that make no sense at all >_> AND there's no 1930s telephone fu either! xD )

Neways.. silly, flimsy, bold and fun :D

Oh yeah.. and Nancy fights yet another villain on a cliff/edge >_>

Angelwings Rating: 3/5

Recommendation: I'd say... yes :D Whether you just get lost in the childish fun and ignore the plot holes, or you find the crazy plot fun and hilarious, it's a fun book, and hits all the right notes in terms of characterization w/ Nancy's absentmindedness and determination and Bess and George's awesome kickass sidekicking :D

Nancy Drew - #2 Review :o

Nancy Drew - #2 "Writ In Stone"



Synopsis: Nancy Drew is babysitting during a storm when she hears a car crash in the distance. A tow truck driver that she knows comes by w/ one of the ppl involved in the car crash b/c it is the closest dry place he knew. The person involved is David Severe (best name evar), an archaeologist. He says that he's glad he was in an SUV or he might be dead. Nancy says that SUVs are actually more dangerous b/c they have a tendency to roll over. He then shows Nancy a rock in his possession that he claims is a shore marker found in California that proves that the Chinese came to North America in 1421, before the Europeans :o

He says that there's lots of circumstantial evidence that the Chinese were in America, but now he has proof since it bears the birth date of the Admiral of the Chinese fleet's son. Nancy Drew remarks that raising a son on the high seas must have been difficult and then invites David to give a talk about the stone in River Heights since their museum could use the fund-raising. He agrees since he's stuck in the town anyways with his car totaled.

At the event, George arrives w/ her new camcorder which she's excited about, while Bess keeps trying to get Nancy to let her put make up on her o_O David appears on stage just then and opens his case to show off the stone but... it's missing! :O

DUN DUN DUNNN >_>

Nancy immediately runs on stage and finds out that he was just backstage in the washroom, so she asks the museum director who else could have been backstage, and is told only the old security guard, but he is good and trustworthy, he even holds down 3 jobs. o_o Nancy sees that as possible motive for stealing an artifact and goes backstage to pursue the guard but finds herself locked in a room :O She uses her call to call her boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, to unlock the door, but by then the guard is gone. :o

Nancy returns to the auditorium and realizes that from George's vantage point her camcorder must have recorded the washroom and so they could check to see who came in or out of there besides David. George laments that in the chaos, her camcorder was stolen! :O At the same time, the mother of Owen, the boy Nancy was babysitting and who was at the Museum as well, runs in saying that Owen is missing too! :O

DUN DUN DUNNNN x 2 >_>

We get some disjointed scenes involving the camcorder and apparently Owen using it to video cats and squirrels when somebody approaches him and offers him candy for the camera. He kicks the mysterious person in the shins and runs off. :o

Meanwhile, Nancy has been narrating the whole time and tells us she & her friends still suspected the guard and went by the cemetery where he worked at night (in his 3rd job) :o He discovers them and they run but Nancy doesn't watch where she's going, trips and smashes her head on a rock :O Bess clutches Nancy Drew and screams out "OH MY GOD! NANCY DREW IS DEAD!!!!!!!"

Best cliffhanger ending of a Chapter 1 evar xD

Chapter 2

Nancy Drew immediately tells Bess to stop yelling cuz it's giving her a headache and gets back up. (Best anti-climactic opening of a Chapter 2 evar xD) George says that they thought Nancy was dead b/c she knocked off a piece of solid tombstone w/ her head. :o But Nancy says that it's not solid, it's actually made of Styrofoam, like a prop, and it's hollow.. something was hidden inside it! :O Nancy measures the Styrofoam rock and as she suspected, it is just big enough to hide the shore marker. She uses Bess' eyeliner to write measurements on her hand (as Bess whines that she won't use it >_> )

In the morning, she and her dad are discussing the case and her dad said that they should concentrate on finding Owen, while Nancy thinks the two mysteries are linked. Their housekeeper suggests that he might just have run away and found himself a little place to hide :o

Bess, George and Nancy go to question the security guard at his house but he refuses to answer questions and slams the door on them! :O Nancy has Bess and George pretend to drive off to distract him while Nancy herself sneaks in thru the back door. She finds that it is roach infested and dilapidated inside but she also discovers the guard's bank statement where he's recently gotten 10,000$ :O She goes into the basement where she finds mysterious dust that might have come from the shore marker :o She scoops it up into the cap of Bess' eyeliner (eyeliner to the rescue this episode! xD they should rly get a deal w/ Maybelline or something and then just have their products save the day xD ) and then calls her friends to get them to honk the horn to distract the guard so she can escape out the back again :o

Nancy goes to talk to David and ask him about the dust and why nebody might want to destroy the shore marker, he says that ppl might to stop him from showing proof of his discovery. :o He looks at the dust under a microscope and says that it's actually just concrete. :|

The next day, Nancy talks w/ Ned and says that she doesn't trust David's analysis and wishes she could get the dust really tested. Ned says he has a friend at the university who could help and calls him. Nancy goes to the post office to mail the sample to him but as she's coming out a car tries to run her over! Ned pushes her out of the way in time as the car drives off! :O

Owen's mom wanders by as Nancy is getting her bearings and says she misses Owen a lot. Nancy thinks that maybe she should be trying to find the shore marker through finding Owen (she's so caring >_> ) They go to his room and finds a painting of a tree and a tree house, which makes Nancy think that it might actually exist! :o

We now switch to the tree house where Owen and the camcorder are. He says he's bored and this isn't fun nemore. But then the guy who was chasing him earlier shows up and captures him in a bag! :O

End Chapter 2

Owen kicks the evil person in the bag and runs off while the evil person laments that he wishes the penalties for hurting a child weren't so severe. o_o

Suddenly scene change and Nancy Drew is pretending to be shot and it turns out she is playing with Owen. Nancy has been doing this for half an hour to try to get Owen to tell her where the camcorder is :o He finally leads them to the tree house where they find the camcorder! :O

They bring it back to Owen's house, along w/ Owen and then plays it on the TV but it turns out he erased almost everything on the tape. :O Nancy gets a call from Ned's friend who tells her the test results. She says that she's solved the mystery but needs to enact a plan to catch the culprits. :O

Nancy does an interview with local reporters about the disappearance of Owen and says that unfortunately they did not recover the camcorder and if anybody finds it please turn it into the police.

They then go back to the tree house where George drops her camcorder to have it look like it fell out of the tree. :o They then hide in the bushes, waiting. While they wait it starts to rain and storm and be windy! :O The bad guy shows up after a while and destroys the camcorder freaking George out D: They try to chase him but in the storm they have trouble locating him. :o He gets into an SUV and tries to escape but like Nancy predicted in the opening, the SUV rolled over as it tries to get out of the woods :O The bad guy gets out and makes a run for it w/ Nancy in hot pursuit! :O They go up the side of a cliff by the water where Nancy confronts him with the storm raging, the water below and them on a small ledge! :O

Dramatic!

>_>

Nancy reveals that she knows who he is: Professor David Severe (Professor Severe is an even better name)! She said that she figured it out b/c Owen gave her a rough sketch, and along with Severe lying about the dust and Severe limping (Owen said he kicked the bad guy) it all pointed to him. She asks why he didn't wear a mask before, and Severe says cuz he's been making it up all along. :o He explains that when Nancy mentioned how hard it would be to raise a child on a boat, he realized that historically the Admiral was a eunuch and therefore he could never have had children and so the shore marker was a fake and he'd be a laughing stock. :O He was going to go along w/ it neways, but then the security guard stole the marker and called for a ransom but he paid the guard to destroy the marker instead. :O When he heard about the camcorder, he was afraid that the guard would be caught and then rat out Severe, so that's why he tried to kidnap Owen and kill Nancy. o_o

The bad guys are arrested (it turns out the guard had been stealing from the museum for years and had lots of money saved up despite where he lived and all his jobs o_o ) and Owen's mom (who is wealthy) insisted on giving Nancy a reward. :o Nancy uses it to buy George a new camcorder, Bess new eyeliner and Owen a play camcorder... and everybody is happy! Yay! (except Professor Severe, who's career is ruined and is in jail.. tho he'll be back... >_>)

THE END!

Review: o_o Honestly, this is prolly the weakest (and maybe overall worst) book of the entire series (actually there's another one that is pretty bad too >_> ) It was rly confusing how the story kept jumping around and they don't segue into the scenes involving the camcorder and Owen very well. :| The first time I read through it I didn't get what was going on, and Nancy having her own narration on TOP of Owen and the bad guy talking made things even MORE confusing. :\ Also the whole mystery was really flimsy. I mean it was easy to figure out b/c there was rly only one person w/ motive and that was Severe and the "artifact being fake" thing isn't new in terms of a mystery plot so it was kind of surprising it took Nancy that long to think along those lines :|

Also the beginning is rly random, how this guy suddenly shows up literally on Nancy's doorstep and then gives random exposition about the artifact. o_o At least there is foreshadowing about the SUV (Nancy gives a lot of stats in her narration at the end about SUV accidents too... this series often talks about the benefits of hybrid cars vs polluting SUVs xD), but the plot is still just far too convenient.

Plus Nancy Drew seems rly out of character o_o Her first priority should have been to find Owen, not the shore marker. Esp since given the scene changes and how it's night then day, then night again, then day... Owen's been gone THREE DAYS O_O How did he survive in just a tree house? Also why is Nancy so nonchalant about the whole thing? It's not like he was missing for only a few hours even though everybody seems to act like he was. Did the writer not pay attention to the scene changes, or were the writer and artist not on the same page? (it's pretty hard to not be though when the graveyard scene clearly could only have taken place at night and then Nancy's dad was eating BREAKFAST the next scene). Neways, it seems rly sloppy and also rly awful and callous of Nancy, which isn't in character for her. :| Even if she gets wrapped up in mysteries, her friends surely wouldn't, AND she still would normally care more about actual PEOPLE than just a shore marker mystery. I mean it wasn't even until she thought finding the kid would help her solve her mystery that she even tries to look.

Also I find it funny that nobody a) knows of the treehouse and b) thinks to look there when Owen's been drawing it. His mom chalks it up to his imagination (and how does a 5 y/o kid build a treehouse sekritly w/o nebody knowing? o_O )

And Severe's actions seem... well... Severe... for a guy who just was worried about a little academic embarrassment. Esp since he didn't seem to have given any other talks on the subject or shown his rock around much (and even if he had, is it worth kidnapping charges or murder? o_O ) so it's not really like it would hurt him THAT much would it? (tho I'm not an academic, so maybe it would! but it's still not worth trying to KILL somebody) AND what rly bugs me, is that given how much he was afraid of the penalties of hurting Owen, and that he seems like he is sort of a not evil guy, it's a HUGE jump to try to run over and kill Nancy O_O (also how did he go from having an SUV to having a sports car to try to kill Nancy and then an SUV again?)

Although.. w/ the ending it means this is the second book in a row to start the series that has Nancy Drew confronting a villain on a cliff! Which, as I said last review, happens a lot. xD So... I just wanted to mention that. :] That and her fighting animals (which she doesn't do here, unless you count the brief scene involving the cockroaches) are the two recurring themes in these books. xD But that's just an "Ami keeps track of these things" aside >_>

RAWR

So yeah, the plot and characterization and the ultimate solution to the mystery was rly rly awful... plus there was that unintentionally hilarious ending to Chapter 1 where Bess screams that Nancy's dead (it's an obvious forced plot point to allow them to put the scene on the back of the book to advertise Nancy's "death") and then she gets right up the next page in Chapter 2 xD But it was v over the top forced :\

The art is okay for most of it but I'd almost say it got worse from Book 1. And when it gets bad, it gets bad and confusing :( It's still rough, like the first few books are, but at some points the art gets REALLY REALLY sketchy... like when Severe is trying to kidnap Owen.. I guess it's to try to hide his face, but his face just ends up being this blank skin colour oval at times (and this isn't from a far away shot), so we SHOULD see detail but we don't, and it's freaky o_o

Also, Ned, David, Owen (who's a CHILD!) and George (who's a teen girl) all look the same at periods of time in the book, which made my understanding of it even MORE confusing the first time through. I can only imagine how annoying it must be for kids to try to get through this, or even adults to explain to kids what's going on at some of the points o_o

Basically, anybody with short brown hair (those 4 chars) all end up looking similarly b/c the art gets so sketchy at times :\ And that rly detracts from the book AND makes it extremely annoying to try to parse -_-;;

Owen and Ned, in particular have a lot of issues. Sometimes Owen looks 12, sometimes he looks 3, sometimes he's at Nancy's chest, and then he's the size of a small pillow when his mom picks him up near the end of the book o_o And Ned sometimes looks taller and older than Nancy (which he is) and then when he's rescuing her from the car he looks like he's 12 and young o_o It's REALLY REALLY inconsistent and.. honestly... sloppy :\ But then in the first few books, as I say, it seems the artist is rly trying to get a handle on the chars and drawing and maybe get more experience of her own as well... the art improves a lot in the later books. :) Tho the series is written and drawn over 4 years (and counting) so there's bound to be lots of improvement and fine tuning... But still... it's very rough here, and it hurts the book a lot :\

And so does the writing and a plot that's held together by leaps of logic, twine and spittle... so... yeah :\ No Ami recommendation here :( (except that hilarious end Chapter 1 scene...)

Angelwings Rating: 1.5 out of 5 uncaring Nancy Drews :( (the .5 is cuz of the OMG NANCY DREW IS DEAD cliffhanger xD)

Recommendation: Unless you really want to read them in order (Severe DOES show up in a later book), if you don't have the money to spend, I wouldn't recommend this book. :\ The plot is a mess and the art is so bad in places it makes it hard to tell what's going on and the characters apart :(