Mysteriet på Willoughby Chase (1962)

Excellent adventure featuring mystery, suspense and strong female leads. ( )

Wonderful Victorian-style melodrama for children. Bonnie and Sylvia are plucky heroines who charm all the good people they meet and bedevil the evil ones. Reread as an adult for a reading challenge, this story yearns to be read aloud by the fire.

So much fun! ( )

Young Bonnie Green of Willoughby Chase has a new governess. Her mother, Lady Green, is very ill, so Sir Willoughby is taking her on a journey to recover her health. While they are away, Sir Willoughby’s distant cousin, Miss Slighcarp, will do double duty as governess and caretaker of Willoughby Chase. Bonnie’s cousin, Sylvia, is coming from London to be a playmate for Bonnie while her parents are away. As soon as Sir Willoughby and Lady Green are gone, Miss Slighcarp reveals her true character. With the assistance of some faithful friends, Bonnie and Sylvia must escape from Miss Slighcarp and her cronies and prevent her from stealing Sir Willoughby’s home and his fortune.

This story shares many characteristics with the fairy tales I loved as a child, as well as a few things from the mystery and adventure stories I loved. If I had read it in my childhood, it’s likely to have been a favorite. The audio version I listened to was read by the author’s daughter, who also wrote the introduction for this version. The daughter’s memories of her mother as author and of being one of the first to hear this book made me appreciate it even more. ( )

I finally read this - or rather, listened to the audiobook, after years and years of having Aiken's work recommended to me by a friend. The reading by her daughter was exceptional. As far as the story went, though, I felt it paled in comparison, either to a book like Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess (which it is surely somewhat inspired by) or to Aiken's own, rather more free-form and whimsical short stories. It's very well-written, the setup is magnificent, and fans of this kind of story will likely enjoy it a great deal. For my part, however, I became a little tired of listening to the latest indignity Bonnie and Sylvia had to undergo, and I kept waiting for something a bit more fantastical to happen. ("The wolves are running," from another likely inspiration, kept crossing my mind - and making me wish for a little magic.) In the end, I liked the book, but my favorite parts were all in Aiken's flourishes, such as her predilection for wonderfully Dickensian names. ( )