by: Carolyn Keene
rating: really liked
If you want to join in a Nancy Drew Book-club, I run the #NancyDrewBookCrew over on my Instagram where we are reading all the books in order. You can come participate in the discussion there!
The discussion questions I wrote for this book and my answers to them:
Nancy normal mysteries are investigated on behalf of her father or in conjunction with her father. But the mystery surrounding the missing music, Carson hands off in it's entirety to Nancy because he is uncomfortable reading the love letters and thinks Nancy is better suited to solve the case. What do you make of this slight shift in ownership Nancy takes? I think this shift in responsibility also causes a shift in Nancy's actions in this one. Nancy flies solo in her mystery solving much more in this one and only very slightly relies on the secondary characters. We get more of Nancy's internal dialogue as she is investigating as well. I'm interested to see if this tweak carries into the next book.
It's fitting that this book fell into the month of October in our schedule because of the spiders and the skeleton. Do you think this book was overall spookier than other Nancy books? I do think that this book is over a bit more suspenseful than other Nancy titles. The mystery isn't as obvious and there are some more dangerous situations than Nancy is normally involved in. And there are a lot more jump scares.
I always think the appearance of Effie the maid is interesting. What do you think of how Effie is portrayed? I feel bad for poor Effie. Nancy says, "jump" and Effie says, "how high?". She has been roped into a job that includes bringing a house up to par and taking care of a sick little girl while also avoiding intruders and spiders. I wouldn't want to be there by myself either! But Nancy is so dismissive of her.
Many of Nancy's mysteries pertain to helping a small child or elderly person in some form of distress. Why do you think that this trope is present in these books? I think that this is to be attributed to the time in which these books was written. Nancy is only needed to aid the helpless. Others should be able to fix their problems themselves. It also shows Nancy's nurturing side to make her more feminine despite the other crazy hijinks she pulls.
How did you feel when Ned showed up at the end? When Ned makes his entrance I was so pleased because I missed him in this one. I think Ned normally is a grounding force for Nancy and I like when he is involved. BUT, when I reflected on it again, I realized that Ned is once again only trotted out in this book to be Nancy's knight in shining armor. I don't like this implication that Nancy needs Ned to save her. I like it much better when they are depicted as a team.
How many eyerolls do you give this book? 2.5. (1.5, the black widows) The likelihood that Effie would be bitten by a black widow in the manner in which she was is just so unlikely. And hat the black widow left with Nancy would target her instead of going towards any light to make a web to catch bugs is just silly. Black widows will bite if disturbed but they don't seek out humans. (1, the overlap) This might be the most far fetched mystery overlap yet. The music and the silk storylines were in fact both interesting, but it made no sense for them to be perpetrated by the same criminal.
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