After getting to visit Biltmore in the spring and listen to author Robert Beatty speak about his Serafina books, I was intrigued. I quickly read the first book in the series, Serafina and the Black Cloak. I stalled between the second and the third book just because I had so many other great books to read.
In Serafina and the Twisted Staff, the story picks up right after the first book. Serafina is accepted into Braedon’s world of the Biltmore House, but things are still uneasy for her. She feels a malevolent presence called “the old man of the mountain” that is threatening Biltmore House, and an English girl has arrived as a visitor and is befriending Braedon. Serafina doesn’t trust Lady Rowenda and her pompous attitude, but she must trust her to help when animals start to go missing, including Braedon and Mr. Vanderbilt’s dogs. Along with all Serafina’s new changes in station, she is also learning more about her past from her catamount mother and her Cherokee friend Waysa. With their help, Serafina may finally be able to connect with her catamount past.
The third book, Serafina and the Splitered Heart, picks up a few months after the second book (so total, the whole series only spans about six months). Serafina wakes up in a coffin, buried in the forrest. She vaguely remembers getting attacked at Biltmore house by a black cloud of pain but nothing more. When she awakes, she realizes that months have past, and Biltmore is still under attack by “the old man in the mountain,” who has been biding his time to take back his mountains from the Vanderbilts. Serafina, with the help of some unlikely accomplices, must take him out once and for all, but it could be the most dangerous adventure for her yet.
This series is a solid 3 out of 5. Once you get into the stories, you will persevere until the end, but the writing style is very descriptive. There’s little dialogue and lots of extraneous details used to show the Blue Ridge Mountains are the setting of the book. You’ll get to hear about different mountain animals and legends, but they also tend to bog down the plot of the story and stall the action. If your upper elementary schooler or middle schooler loves a magical mystery, this book could be the next book for them.
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