Review: Clifftoppers – The Fire Bay Adventure

The Clifftoppers are back for their second exciting adventure!

Book: Clifftoppers – The Fire Bay Adventure by Fleur Hitchcock

Read before: No

Ownership: Review copy sent free of charge by Nosy Crow Books. All opinions my own.

I think I liked this even better than the first book! The Clifftoppers adventures are a perfect mix of nostalgia and modernity, keeping that classic kids-solving-mysteries feel that we know and love, while bringing the characters and setting bang up to date. In this second instalment in the series, we find Ava, Chloe, Aiden and Josh getting ready for the annual Drake’s Bay Fire Festival, but before the festivities can get off to a good start, there’s a mystery to be solved, with fires breaking out in town and a sinister market stall selling suspiciously well-priced goods…

This was just so much fun to read – it makes you want to go out and investigate dusty old churches and chase down wrongdoers! The children are really believable, both as modern Gen Z kids, and as siblings/cousins. They have such well-written relationships with each other, that mix of affection and exasperation, and the dialogue feels fresh and accurate. The mystery itself is perfectly pitched (I don’t want to spoil it, but it refreshes an old adventure standard in a really cool way – one that rhymes with ‘jugglers’…) and as with the first book, I liked that it feels set in the present, and has good explanations for why these children are the only ones involved in the investigations (which as an adult I always wonder about!).

I can’t recommend this series enough to anyone who loves a classic Blyton-esque mystery adventure, but would prefer it brought into this millennium. The Fire Bay Adventure is a great second book, and long may the Clifftoppers keep investigating! Four out of five cats.