Secrets and Scallywags

Magical Mystery Book Club #6

By: Elizabeth Pantley

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

When this club selects a book, magic happens. They become the main characters in the story when the mystery comes to life.

This month’s book selection takes them to a charming island community that’s abuzz over a mysterious boat that washed ashore. Rumor has it that it’s the same pirate boat that sunk a year ago in the bay. The one that supposedly sank with treasure aboard.

When the club meets the ghosts of the men from the boat, they learn the astonishing secrets of the treasure. These ghosts can’t move on until it is found.

Can the motley group find the treasure and free the ghosts? They better, since it’s the only way they can exit the book and get back home.

"You can’t enough of this series! It will blow you away!"
~ Cozy Mystery Book Reviews

“One of my go-to series. The quality and enjoyment are guaranteed.”
… All and Any Books

“I adore this series, and it just keeps getting better with each book!”
… Fiction Vixen

Avast Ye mystery lovers

As a pirate would say Avast Ye mystery lovers, I looked it up and Avast Ye is a command meaning pay attention or listen, so it seemed appropriate for this adventure. What I love about this series is you never know where the author is going to take you but it will be entertaining and fun. You also learn things. While it isn't a murder mystery as such, as the deaths only occur because of greed and an old curse, the gang still needs to work out who is responsible and question suspects. I love the characters and would be hard pressed to choose a favourite, I liked the way Molly the ghost found new friends in this adventure and I really thought the author was going to shake things up again. The author lets her imagination go and with this series anything is possible, which is why I hope there is a lot more to come.
With a new member joining the group things are bound to get interesting. For the mystery adventure this time round they choose a book containing pirates and a lost treasure. The small island town is being plagued by pirates but once Pagie and the gang meet four dead pirates. They are attached to a ship that has washed up on shore after a storm, it soon becomes apparent that it is the four ghosts that need there help. Their treasure was stolen and they need the gang to pull of a magic trick and find the men responsible before the ship is broken up or the treasure that was stolen will unleash a curse on the unwary.
Virtual voice is the narrator for this series and while it took a while to get use to the voice I actually liked it because it meant you could enjoy the story as the author meant, without the narrator putting there own spin on what they thought was important.

Great chemistry with the characters.

Listening to the audiobook just made this wonderful, fantasy book shine more. Read via AI, there is a bit of an adjustment period. Once you become use to the rhythm and tone, you find yourself noticing nothing but the wonderful words that draw you into the book.

The merry band of misfits are back. This time, the new addition is Valeria who is excited about joining the magical mystery book club after she hears how it works. The author is the best at creating normal characters with idiosyncrasies that work so well within the story of the story. A perfect example is Moonbeam; a simple hippy, who doesn’t hesitate to defend her beliefs.

The plot was entertaining with some unexpected surprises as the mystery crew attempts to help the ghostly crew of a sunken pirate ship. There is plenty of merry making along with the darkness of unexpected deaths. As the crew attempts to solve the mystery, they are taken along on a treasure hunt that has some surprises of it’s own. The author lets out a few hints regarding Frank, the talking cat, who has some secrets of his own. The setting was at a beach side community, and I loved how all the characters were excited about it.

The thing I love the most about the author’s style of writing is that it feels like your sitting at the librarian’s feet and listening to the best story. Her words never fail to transport you to the best world, magical or not.

My review is voluntary and all comments and opinions are my own.

Ghost Pirate Treasure Hunt Mystery

"Secrets and Scallywags (Magical Mystery Book Club #5)" by Elizabeth Pantley is ghost pirates meet cozy mystery treasure hunt more than murder mystery. There are deaths but there's not much mystery behind why. That's okay, not every cozy mystery has to be a murder mystery.

In this one the book club goes into a modern pirate cozy mystery. The ghost pirates need to recover their missing treasure so they can go back to pirating and not be stuck in limbo. I wont given much more detail as that would be getting into spoiler territory.

S&S Bk 5

I got this book because I liked the premise of falling into a book physically. While I'm not a huge fan of cozy mysteries I can't complain, since the series clearly identifies "cozy" but the series left me wanting more out of the story, I felt this series had loads of promise for it's idea's of travelling within the book - The character "Moonbeam" was totally redundant and in my opinion and brought the book down instead of adding a new dimension to the story line. Moonbeam also spends too much time minding other peoples business and wanting to correct their language and behaviour -
The virtual voice narrator still needs work, but it's one of the better virtual voice AI that I've listened to. The problem with virtual voice is that it lacks lilt and sarcasm, and idioms like "Tomato - Toe-mot-o" are lost on virtual voice, so it's difficult to feel part of the story in my opinion.