Genre- Fiction/Fantasy
Level- Challenging
Rate- 8/10
In the book 13 Treasures, the protagonist, Tanya, goes on a wild hunt to uncover secret after secret about her family that she never saw coming. The book starts out with Tanya at her moms house. Her parents are divorced and she hasn’t seen her Dad in 10 years. She is in her room on a hot summer day when three unexpected characters come in through her window. Three fairies named Raven, Mizhog and Gredin. She has always been able to see fairies, but she thought this was normal. She did not know this was a gift she held. They begin to taunt Tanya and she can’t get their voices out of her head. Then later on, Tanya’s mom decides to send Tanya to her Grandma’s house for the rest of the summer. Tanya does not like this idea at first and her mom and Tanya have lots of arguments about it. Once they arrive at Elvesden Manner, a creepy mansion that her Grandmother lives in, Warwick the groundskeeper lets them inside. She meets with her grandmother and a spell caster. For the next 2 weeks she searches the house and finds clues to her secret family’s life. Tanya becomes part of this fairy world with goblins and other evil creatures who are out to get her. One day after being harassed by goblins and brownies, she runs back to the manner and sees the spell caster. The spell caster tells her that she has a second sight. The creatures that she see’s are nothings that an other ordinary person can see. Tanya has fairy blood in her because one of her family members is a changeling. A changeling is someone who is kidnapped and replaced with a fairy.
Warwick has a son named Fabian that has always known Tanya since they were little and have always been friendly. Tanya and Fabian find many secret passages throughout the manner that they had only tapped into before. But now they are going deeper. The hear many of the residents of the manner talking about the past murders of children that have taken place around the property. They find clues about Fabian’s grandfather, Amos, who is believed to have murdered Morwenna Bloom, who Tanya later finds out is related to her. This whole manner has a twisted story that is behind the scenes, and in the end all ties together. (I won’t give too much away in case you care to read it) but, the biggest mystery has an ending that you never would have saw coming when Tanya finds out why she is related to all of this.
A main idea that was consistent throughout the whole book was when events some up to scare you off, courage helps you to pull through. At first, many times Talia would be scared by noises she heard and things she saw. She would huddle in a corner for safety. In the book it says, “She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Trapped by fear, a prisoner in her own body{…]” This excerpt explains the level of fear Tanya would experience. Eventually, Tanya has enough courage to go out into the woods with Fabian. This is very hard for Tanya because the reason she is with her grandma is because her mom thought that Tanya was going crazy because she was seeing things. This was what was “scaring her off.” An example of this is on page 84, “Once or twice Tanya thought she saw faces in the bark of the trees, or the limblike movement of the branch,but no longer felt able to distinguish between that which was fey and her own paranoia. So, whenever Tanya starts to see fairies and goblins, she is always reminded of how her mom reacted. But she used her courage to overcome the situation. Many times Fabian though that it would be best if Tanya stayed behind and not go into the woods because she was scared many times. Instead, Tanya would use her courage to go with Fabian into the woods. So even when she was scared in the woods, she would think of something to calm herself and continue on, not turning back. Towards the middle of the book, just by Tanya’s body language described, you are able to infer that she has overcome many of hear fears from courage. An example of this is on page 149, “When the girl handed her the brown paper bag for her to change clothes, she immediately put the scarf on, eager to determine whether there had been any truth in the old book.” It explains how before they were getting changed to prepare for searching in the woods of the book, Tanya was very eager to go. This shows how Tanya gained then used her courage to fight the fears she held on to.
Overall, this book, 13 Treasures, was a some-what challenging book. It had a wide range of harder vocabulary. There was a lot of action in this book and it was entertaining. There were some parts when new characters were introduced and it could be a bit confusing. Also, there were many parts that were “freaky” (I guess you could say), with very descriptive words of the situation. People who do not like scary books or novels should not read this. There are multiple frightening things. I don’t have much criticism for the author of the book because it was very intriguing and left you wanting more. I would recommend this book for 7th, 8th and 9th graders who like mystery and (somewhat) horror novels. It is a well written book that will leave you with your predictions reversed.