Felicity has just said good-bye to her mother, who's going on a trip and leaving Felicity in charge of the house. Mother's carriage has barely left before a surprise package arrives, holding silver heirlooms that have been passed down in the Merriman family for a hundred years. Felicity doesn't believe in ghosts . . . but what else can explain the odd and eerie things that begin to happen once the heirlooms arrive?
Elizabeth McDavid Jones was born in 1958 in South Carolina. When she was a child, she moved in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated from East Carolina University and started a career in social work. When Jones earned a master's degree in literature in 1996, she changed her career to a university literature. During this period, she began writing children's books. She is a mother of four children.
She is the author of nine books and many magazine and serial stories for young people. Her books have sold over 750,000 copies. She is particularly known for her work writing with American Girl.
oh this took me RIGHT back. reading this was like being 10, tucked in the backseat of the family minivan, trying to read by the streetlights on our way home from church fall festival. 🫶
A quick and entertaining read. It was interesting to see how much Felicity was expected to do at 11 years old while her mother was away. This aspect was more fascinating to me rather than the "mystery"- which fell a bit flat. While it wasn't difficult to guess whodunit, the writing was engaging enough to hold my interest. I enjoyed learning about Lady Margaret's character and whether or not her ghost was really in charge of the item disappearances. The author does briefly mention and acknowledge slavery, which the original Felicity books did not to my recollection. This story does also mention child abuse. I don't remember much of the AG mystery book spinoffs, so I look forward to continuing the series.
“But ghosts don’t exist, Felicity.” “How do we know?” asked Felicity. “Sir Edward believed in his wife’s ghost enough that he left England and sailed to the colonies, trying to escape her. And still she followed him.” She paused. “It sounds crazy, but I’ve been feeling a sort of presence around me ever since the heirlooms arrived.” “Are you certain you haven’t imagined it?” “No, I’m not certain. But I have felt something, as surely as I feel the wind blowing now.” 📚☕
This middle grade mystery was definitely a page turner for me! Eleven-year-old Felicity is asked to maintain the home for two weeks while her mother is away. Can she handle it? One thing after another goes wrong.
But when a wooden box of late “Lady Margaret’s” shows up, unexplainable mysteries begin to happen. She should never have asked her Dad to share the ghost story associated with this ancestor.
Once the story got going, I literally could not put it down. Just the perfect gentle mystery!
I was completely wrong about the culprit of the story.
Felicity Merriman has just bid farewell to her mother who has left on a trip. Soon after her mother leaves, a strange package arrived at the Merriman household. Inside are valuables of Lady Margaret, an ancestor of the Merrimans. Felicity finds inside a gorgeous silver hairbrush, a silver cup, and a baby rattle. Her father tells her the story of Lady Margaret ghost. How it was hard for her to have a child, how the child died and Lady Maragaret too soon after. Her last words were telling her husband she was sorry. People claimed to have seen her ghost, wandering through her home, finding a blanket to cover her baby.
The story sends chills up Felicity's back. She cannot shake the story out of her mind. One day when planning a meal for her father, she needed the keys to the cupboard. But they were gone, so she asked her friend, Elizabeth Cole to help find them. When they got back, the keys were back! They were very puzzled, then they discovered something horrific. The precious silver heirlooms-were gone!
Felicity has a line of suspects:
Mrs. Hewitt, the bossy old woman who helped Felicity with her cooking.
Dawson, a lad she met at the race grounds.
Anne, a very curly red-headed girl she met while watching the race.
That said, Felicity’s active imagination makes the possibility of a ghost feel more possible than other “is it haunted??” AG mysteries.
The Lady Margaret of the title is an ancestor of sorts. Technically, she’s not related by blood – Father says that after Margaret died very young, his ancestor remarried and that woman is their forebear. I have two (ultimately unimportant) nits to pick here: - Is the Merriman family just a magnet for red hair? Lady Margaret is not genetically related, so having hair like Felicity’s is pure coincidence. We already have two redheaded Merriman parents with four redheaded children – this is the Weasley family before we had the Weasley family. - The heirlooms that arrive in chapter 1 have been in the family for a hundred years. That’s a while, but not that many generations. If I was talking about my great-grandfather, I’d just say that, not “ancestor.”
Anyway, that’s long enough for a ghost story to have flourished around the tragic Lady Margaret, and the circumstances are just right for it to resonate with Felicity, because Mother, Rose, and the younger children are away for this one, leaving Felicity to manage the household. She’s out of her element, making her less confident than we usually see her. Her parents have arranged for a woman to help with the cooking – Felicity finds her tough to get along with – but she’s only there part of the day, meaning this usually bustling house is unusually quiet. Just right for a ghost story…
Since this is Felicity, naturally the other key plot revolves around Penny (another red-haired Merriman, after a fashion). Ben rides her in a race at Publick Times, Williamsburg’s annual festival, and basically nothing from there goes as they expect.
The pool of suspects is pretty good. The main culprit is fairly easy to spot, but the character is given enough complexity to be interesting, and Felicity has made several unexpected new friends by the end of the book.
Overall, this is a pretty good one and it made a fun read.
I read this book for the podcast I’m currently listening to called “American Girls” by Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney.
In this Felicity Mystery, we follow a Felicity Merriman during Publick Times. Like the chaos of Publick Times in Williamsburg, there is pure chaos in Felicity’s life too as her mother is gone (so Felicity has to be the gentlewoman of the house), she has Mrs. Hewitt watching her every move (which makes her more nervous), her horse Penny is racing one day and gets decently hurt (Felicity can’t figure out), stuff is getting stolen (Felicity can’t figure out how again), and there may be a ghost from ancient family heirlooms her family has just received from the death of their father’s cousin (LOL WHAT)... What is Felicity to do in these unsettling times?
As you can tell from the description I’ve provided above, there is a ton that is going on in “Lady Margaret’s Ghost”, which is why I’ve awarded this Felicity book a three out of the Mystery series. It’s too much. From the first twenty pages, I was sort of over it because if the ghost elements aren’t enough to roll your eyes in the back of your head then all the other stuff will. Mind you, this is not the worst Mystery book of Felicity’s, in my opinion, but I did not love this one like I had genuinely loved “A Traitor In Williamsburg”. “Lady Margaret’s Ghost” does keep you on your toe as it is difficult to piece together who is doing what... There are moments were you are debating if it is Mrs. Hewitt being bad, Dawson, Anne, Lady Margaret, etc... You don’t know who is behind what, which I did really appreciate in this book. Like “A Traitor In Williamsburg”, it’s not completely obvious, so it made the book worth reading in some ways. But I didn’t know (or really care after some point) which certain things out of all the other things am I really supposed to focus on and give a shit about, if that makes any lick of sense? Like, is it Dawson I should be focus on or is it Anne or the ghost or... And so on. To me, all the characters that we are supposed to care about seemed very temporary in the novel, not really making me care at all, in the end, and because there are so many... It just really didn’t matter to me what the truth was because it was so much work juggling them all in this convoluted storyline. Can you see what I’m saying or as my review as confusing as this book is?
Anyway, as I always say in every Felicity book, the enslavement and racism in this book was a problem again as usual in this series. I encourage parents to have honest talks with their children about what America was raised on because this books willingly ignore it (and basically say it’s okay because it’s “history”). I think I did say this in my last one, (maybe?) but I think it’s even more important to have these conversations with the Felicity Mystery books because Elizabeth McDavid Jones, the author of these specific books in the series, seems to just not give a fuck about it and just writes very harshly in a way where I feel before, at least, Valerie Tripp tries and fails to talk about the wrongdoings of enslavement more in her books... In my opinion, it feels as if Elizabeth McDavid Jones doesn’t seem to try at all. Is one worst than the other? Maybe not. But you would think, after these books coming out much later from the original series, that McDavid Jones would have made more strives in correcting this issue in the newer series showing how enslavement is not okay even if our ancestors or history. Instead, compared to Tripp, it feels like she tries even less than she did, choosing to blindly ignore it, which shocks and saddens me more despite neither of these being okay.
This is my first look at the Felicity story line. I will have to go to the library to find the other, original books. She's an interesting character living in a time and place that I love. She lives in Williamsburg, Virginia during the Revolutionary War.
Mystery is one of my favorite genres - my parents would read The Hardy Boys to me at bedtime. This is not at the same level as a classic Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew mystery, but given the target reader age group it isn't bad.
The plot finds Felicity in charge of the household while her mother and younger siblings area away. [Please remember that 11 year old girls in the 1700s held much more responsibility than those of today.] That portion of the plot took a secondary and supporting role to the main goal of what was happening at the house with things appearing and disappearing.
Felicity tries to figure out what is going on and when her own thoughts get jumbled, she turns to her friend Elizabeth. There are a couple of red herrings. In the end, well...I don't like to give spoilers.
As I mentioned before, this was a thoroughly enjoyable read. It is a good chapter book. I really liked it.
It pains me to put an AG book this low, much less a Felicity one but it simply didn’t do it for me. I think it’s *because* it’s a Felicity book that I’m sad it wasn’t better, but it was written much after and by a different person. It didn’t feel like the same character to me and it kind of dragged, but that’s okay.
my friends and i found this in a little free library while on my bachelorette trip, and upon finding it we all cheered like we had won the lottery. it’s been making its way around the squad and today was my turn—what a delightful little nostalgia trip, despite felicity driving me BANANAS with her choice to leave the door unlocked and leaving the keys where they could (clearly) be easily stolen!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
I found A Felicity Mystery Lady Margaret’s Ghost at a library book sale and immediately bought it to add to my collection. A relatively short tale, Felicity is in charge of the household while her mother and siblings visit a relative. Almost immediately mysterious things happen: Felicity loses her necklace, her horse is injured, and silver and keys are missing then returned.
What I liked: I’m always struck with how American Girl books illustrate how life was different or the same for children in the past. In this case, children are working, they mention Felicity getting married in a few years (she’s 11). In addition, how hard life was, Felicity has to make dinner from scratch over a fire for example. That being said, the actual information on what life was like was pretty limited in this book.
The information about life in Williamsburg in the Peek into the Past section gives kids (and adults) more insight.
What didn’t work for me: The mystery was a little flat - is it a ghost, a little girl that Felicity met at the race, the boy whose story keeps changing, their hired housekeeper? Felicity never really tells an adult what is going on until they figure out the mystery. And there are really no clues as to who or what might be behind the missing objects.
There’s a brief mention of slavery and indentured servants but it’s pretty brushed over. I get it wasn’t the main point of the story but felt like it could be explained a bit more.
Who should read it: This wasn’t my favorite American Girl book and I don’t think the characters were explained well if you haven’t read Felicity’s stories in the past. That being said, it’s a short intro into ghost trope mysteries for kids - it’s not super scary and I think kids will like Felicity and friends take the lead.
Score! A Felicity mystery where you could, in theory, actually figure out the mystery or where it wasn't glaringly obvious the moment the villain appears. That alone earned it an extra star. Well, that and I like mysteries where as soon as you consider a possibility, at least one character will bring it up as well, even if it's just to shoot the idea down.
The only thing I really didn't like is that Felicity would jump onto every idea presented to her without really thinking it through. Naturally this doesn't always end well for her, but I suppose it's also fitting with her character, so I can't truly complain other than to say that I'd hoped that by the time she turned 11, she'd have grown up a bit in that regard.
Felicity has just said good-bye to her mother, who's going on a trip and leaving Felicity in charge of the house. Mother's carriage has barely left before a surprise package arrives, holding silver heirlooms that have been passed down in the Merriman family for a hundred years. Felicity doesn't believe in ghosts... but what else can explain the odd and eerie things that begin to happen once the heirlooms arrive?
I loved every minute of this book, it turns out not to be a ghost or someone playing pranks... I'm not saying more about the outcome of the story because I don't want to spoil it.
My daughter received this as a birthday gift and was thrilled when she opened it! I read the book one night after she went to bed and was really impressed by the story. What great historical fiction for young girls! It mixes mystery with history, and the American Girl series provides a nice wholesome role model for girls. I can definitely see its appeal for the "tween" reading crowd!
Have you ever read a book that gives you the shivers while you are reading it? That is what this book did for me. With all the missing items and all the talk of ghosts it really gave me the shivers. It ended different than I expected.
Sad-ish I new who the robber was from the bugging so it wasn't much if a turn point when they found out who they thought was the robber wasn't but its still a good book! :)
Amazing!! I loved the twist at the end! It was just *kiss sound*!!! Some times in the story you actually think there IS a ghost! There are so many people who could've stolen the items, but it all comes down to the culprit: "You realize what this means, don't you Elizabeth? If Dawson isn't the thief..." Elizabeth leaned back against the wall, too. "Then the only culprit we have left is Lady Margaret."
#supertwist #epiclayout #amustread
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
As the issue of ghosts isn't truly resolved at any point in the story, the mystery has some interesting "thoughts". It is advised that a real perspective of ghosts be provided; this may also open opportunity to talk about how imagination can get the better of us. Ghost aside, it's a fine story.
I felt a familiarity with what Felicity was feeling. When my parents were gone things felt different and things that might not have bothered me did. This book is a quick read and has some turns to help keep it interesting.
I like that Felicity helps out several people in this one, however, the circumstances requiring help are a reminder of how tough times were back then and how great it is we have the freedom we have now.
It’s exciting to revisit characters I read as a child through a new lense. This mystery was a quick read and I always appreciate the peek into the past at the end of each book, explaining what really happened at these moments in history.