Wendington Jones and the Lost Legacy
Daniel Dockery
UCLan Publishing

I was unable to put down the first instalment of the series, Wendington Jones and the Missing Tree and came to this follow up with high hopes: I wasn’t disappointed.

The book opens with Wendington, restless after her first adventure desperate to ‘taste the mystery and thrill of that excitement again; to chase the unknown and fantastical.’ As she tries to pick the lock to her mother’s private study at 2am, she’s frustrated in her efforts by Rohan (her grandmother’s valet). Instead, unable to sleep she goes downstairs and having seen a strange light outside, follows and catches ups with a stranger in Grandmamma’s rose garden. He’s tending the roses, so he tells Wendington. However, this is no ordinary gardener, it transpires he’s actually Grigor Rasputin, a supposedly dead, monk, healer and close friend of the last Russian royal family.

Things get progressively stranger: while Wendington and Cordelia, her friend from school are looking at a book together, Cordelia says that she’s pretty certain that the young Tsarina in a photo of the Romanovs, she who had supposedly died nearly three years ago, is the spitting image of Octavia Winchester, head girl of their school. The girls decide to go to school and a plan is formed, one which becomes blazingly hot.

Meanwhile her Grandmamma is about to hold a grand event for international dignitaries including some Russian notables- the revolutionaries. Just before though, Wendington discovers that her dead mother had Romanov connections.
As more is revealed, Wendington and the faithful Rohan are soon dashing across Europe towards Venice seeking Anastasia the Tsarina in an effort to save her from Rasputin. So doing will bring her back in contact with those who bear a huge grudge against her, the Dominos.

With perils aplenty, this cracking period adventure, superbly plotted, with some terrific and some terrifying characters, as well as a satisfying finale, is every bit as gripping as the first book.