This book is about a 13-year-old girl called Holly and her little brother Davy who is seven. The story is told in the first person, narrated by Holly, and is set in the present day. They live with their older half-brother, Jonathan, who is their legal guardian because their parents are dead. He works in a cafe, so money is short and their lives are quite hard at the start of the story.
One day the children are told that their great-aunt is in hospital, and when they go to visit her, she gives Holly an album full of photographs of strange places. After she dies, they find out that she’s left them all her jewellery, but unfortunately she was so paranoid her disagreeable husband would steal them that she went through the trouble of burying them like buried treasure. Holly works out that the photos might be clues to where the treasure is buried, and so the children start on a journey across Britain to search for their inheritance.
I won’t tell you the details about what happens next because I don’t want to ruin the story for you. However, I was really interested to find that they had to travel to Orkney because I have been there a few times to visit my relatives. I must say that the author’s description of Orkney is very realistic, I love this line:
you could see little grey or white houses, sprouting up like strange Orkney mushrooms.
I think Sally Nicholls does an excellent job of describing the main protagonists so that you get inside their personalities and she has written a very entertaining story, with flashes of humour in places. I would recommend it to boys and girls of about 9 and above.
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