Book Description 

With a dad who disappeared years ago and a mother who’s a bit too busy to parent, Emmy is shipped off to Wellsworth, a prestigious boarding school in England, where she’s sure she won’t fit in.

But then she finds a box of mysterious medallions in the attic of her home—medallions that belonged to her father. Her father who may have gone to Wellsworth.

When she arrives at school, she finds the strange symbols from the medallions etched into walls and books, which leads Emmy and her new friends, Jack and Lola, to Wellsworth’s secret society: The Order of Black Hollow Lane. Emmy can’t help but think that the society had something to do with her dad’s disappearance, and that there may be more than just dark secrets in the halls of Wellsworth…

My Review 

This review is shamefully overdue, but I have been making time to follow up on the titles that have been languishing in my NetGalley queue for years. 

I have always been a fan of boarding school stories, so I would have been all over this as a kid. This is the first book in the series, so it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, with the promise of more to be revealed in the future. 

Boarding school is tough enough, but an American at a British boarding school is even more of a fish-out-of-water situation for protagonist Emmy. Luckily, she has friends Jack and Lola to help her adjust to the expectations of her new environment. 

Emmy is a likeable protagonist. She is plucky and intrepid and curious. She handles formidable challenges and doesn’t back down. 

As an adult reader, I did find some plot elements to be a bit predictable, but I’d like to think that the target audience would be sufficiently surprised by the revelations. 

I would absolutely recommend The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane. This is perfect for children reading at a middle grade level. It is exciting without being particularly scary and its content remains appropriate for the target audience, despite the potential for YA-level situations. My TBR queue is out of control, but I am going to have to make space for the sequel. 

I received a digital ARC of this book from Sourcebooks/NetGalley.