A review by Blake: This mystery really stumped me. It was really good though. At one point I thought they had the culprit cornered but they didn't. It was a big stumper because it had too many suspects. Overall it was a good book. ( )

This is a well-written mystery, with just the right amount of red herrings and ghostly encounters for the intended age. I found it very hard to put down. While older readers might guess at the real culprits, I think most young readers will enjoy unraveling the mystery bit by bit with Felicity.

Perhaps a class studying the Revolutionary/Colonial period could form book clubs, each club reading a different book set during the time period. This would be a good choice for one book club because it is told from a girl's point of view (vs. a soldier or founding father, for example) and provides a lot of information about daily life and customs. Each book club could keep a reader's journal and answer questions regarding its book during the reading process...and then the clubs could do a presentation to the class about what they learned about the historic period from their particular book.

So for once Felicity WANTS to be a grown up lady (being eleven will do that to you), but when she's in charge for two weeks everything goes wrong. She doesn't know if she's being haunted by a ghost or if there's something else going on. She meets two young friends who might also be suspects- so who is taking things, is there a ghost, and can Felicity be trusted to be the lady of the house? ( )

The author of Lady Margaret's Ghost wrote both of Felicity's other mysteries, so we do have some good style-continuity, but the same problems with the plot. It's a decent plot, don't get me wrong, but it feels very serial. Like, the kind of serial where it doesn't matter if there's continuity, the way Nancy Drew is always 18 and the Baby Sitters Club girls are always 13 (except for the first few books when they're twelve). It doesn't really tie in much of anything from other Felicity stories, and a good half of the characters are brand new in the story and then are written out by the end. Besides which, only Felicity and maybe Dawson have any kind of personality - the rest of the characters strike me as little more than plot devices, even the well-loved characters of Elizabeth or Ben.

There are some tiny additions to the Felicity canon: the book takes place in October of 1776 - the war has been on for a year and Felicity is eleven; the first Merriman to come to America was Sir Edward in 1653 and he was a wealthy English nobleman. Lady Margaret is the first wife of Sir Edward. She died shortly after her first child was stillborn, thus the whole ghost thing.

October of 1776 is the Publick Times in Williamsburg, which Felicity fans may recall as being the setting of the short story "Felicity Takes a Dare" - I believe that one is the 1774 Publick Times? At any rate, LMG occurs during the second week of the event. Mrs Merriman has gone to visit her Aunt Prudence with the three younger children, leaving Felicity to run the household while they're away. Because she isn't quite strong enough to manage the heavier pots and things on her own in the kitchen, Mrs Hewitt is hired to help.

The day after Mrs Merriman leaves is a busy one! Not only does a box filled with Merriman heirlooms arrive, but so does Mrs Hewitt, and Ben is to ride Penny in a Publick Times race. At the track, Felicity and Elizabeth meet Dawson, a boy hired to jockey a roan yearling, and Anne, an orphaned girl who has curly hair as red as Felicity's. Despite the fact that she's a mare, Penny is a sure bet to win her heat. Yet, for some reason, she grows lame during the race and ends up dead last. Felicity, too, nearly topples over, when she's bumped into while watching the race, and loses her balance while standing on a rocky outcropping of a hill.

These two misfortunes are only the first of many strange events that occur during the next few days. Felicity's coral necklace goes missing, then Lady Margaret's beautiful silver items, and even some ordinary things like a wheel of cheese, a loaf of bread, candles, and a quilt. Who would steal only those things, but not the many other expensive items in the house? Felicity and Elizabeth at first suspect Mrs Hewitt, whom Felicity finds difficult to work with, but then they wonder if Dawson might not be the culprit - after all, he has a rather shady past and can't be trusted, even if he is helping to heal Penny.

Felicity grows discouraged with herself for her irresponsibility - afterall, she wants to show her parents that they were right to trust her to run the household, but she has forgotten to lock doors and temporarily lost the household keyring - and begins to think that it is actually Lady Margaret's ghost who is taking everything. Surely she can put everything to rights before her mother returns home, right?

I solved the mystery early in the book, and there were several times when I felt like rolling my eyes because Felicity seemed to take too long to figure out some of the clues. It seemed as though the delay was forced, without believable reasons. When two men take a particularly long time examining Penny before the race, while being told that those same men bet large amounts on their own horses, Felicity doesn't have any suspicions about the motives. Later, when it turns out that there are large and painful burrs under the saddle blanket that have caused large sores, she takes an entire chapter to even think that someone may have put them there on purpose, even after being told by Dawson that Anne was seen gathering those burrs in her apron for her guardian, though they had no useful purpose.

Despite being ahead of Felicity on the mystery, I enjoyed seeing how the reveal played out. Felicity's lapses in responsibility were quite believable for an eleven-year-old in charge of the house for the first time, especially considering that she was up late at nights caring for her injured horse. There was also a fun scene involving a thunderstorm when Felicity and Elizabeth begin to believe that the culprit behind the disappearances is actually a ghost. It was straight out of a cheesy horror film, and I laughed at the placement of thunder and rain torrents.

One thing I noted, as I mentioned at the beginning, is that Felicity and Dawson seem to be the only characters with personalities. Elizabeth didn't seem to have any role except to follow Felicity around and to be an excuse for Felicity to leave the house and have someone to explain the mystery (and guesses) to. She was present for much of the book, but I can hardly remember her doing anything except acting as a mobile post.

Also, as a bit of trivia, the Merriman's house slave Rose is called a servant, while Marcus, who is attached to the store, is called a slave. It seemed an odd thing to do, to not use the same terminology for both. (For example, to soften the blow that the Merrimans are slave-owners, to call Marcus a servant.) ( )