The Midnight Market

July 1, 2021
To reestablish their friendship and their reputations as treasure hunters, Lola Benko convinces Jin Wu-Rossi and Hannah Hill to join her at summer camp--and on another quest. After their success reclaiming the Stone of Istenanya in Lola Benko, Treasure Hunter (2020), the three middle schoolers are eager to find the Pegasus necklace. Their overconfidence results in an epic failure to deliver, recounted here with cheek by Lola. Cast out of the treasure-hunting world, the friends drift apart. Anxious to bring the team together again, Lola jumps when her father pulls strings to get the trio into a camp for like-minded explorers--but it takes some doing to get Jin and Hannah to agree to attend. They immediately question their decision when they find Lipstick, their nemesis, is the camp director. She uses them to retrieve the Helm of Darkness while others are trying to off them. Thankfully, some of the villains are dimwits. As the team hurtles around New York City on the hunt, they depend less on STEM skills and more on zany happenstance plus help from brainy, comical Zeus, Lola's great-aunt's talking parrot, who stowed away for the trip. It's the rapport between the friends that provides the real magic in this colorful, ridiculous adventure. The caper closes with a surprise reveal and the promise of more to come. Other than Chinese/Italian Jin, most characters read as White. Laugh-out-loud funny. (Adventure. 10-14)

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September 3, 2021

Gr 4-7-After their previous treasure-hunting adventures, Lola and her friends Jin and Hannah are trying to readjust to normal life. Well, really it's just Lola who is having trouble readjusting. Her friends have new interests-video games, rock climbing, romance. In a last-ditch effort to reunite the crew, Lola convinces them to attend a summer camp for special agents. She, of course, gets more than she bargained for when the camp is run by the evil villain, Lipstick, who they tangled with in the first entry in the series. New readers will have to wade through a lot of backstory to get caught up and may not find the effort worthwhile. However, for those who enjoyed the first installment or those looking for a middle grade Indiana Jones-style adventure with a female protagonist, this could be just the thing. The character development is secondary to the banter and plot as is common to the genre. VERDICT Not a first purchase, but recommended where the first book was popular or for rounding out an adventure collection.-Gesse Stark-Smith, Multnomah County Lib., Portland, OR

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