Love Notes

by Margaret Clark

Someone put an anonymous love note in Laura Love's school bag. A secret admirer. How exciting. But who? Luckily Laura's mother is a private investigator and interested in helping Laura solve the puzzle. But the mystery deepens when all of Laura's classmates get a love note in the same writing, but she doesn't. What is going on?

Genres: Mystery

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Margaret Clark was born in Geelong, Victoria, Australia on 20th April 1942.
She has written books under the name M.D.Clark, Margaret D Clark and Lee Striker. Now she writes as Margaret Clark. With over one hundred books about relationships, friendships, and social issues under the guise of humour, Margaret's books have become very popular with young readers. She writes for ages four years to sixteen years. Her first book Pugwall was published in 1987 and subsequently made into a TV series, followed by Pugwall's Summer in 1989.

Reviews

[Sally · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read a few Margaret Clark books in my time, so when I saw this in City Library on Thursday I pretty much just grabbed it for the Australian-factor. Read it today, and I swear I went "WHY am I reading this again?" about ninety times. The premise was just... odd. Laura receives an anonymous love note, and she goes to her PI mother for ideas... and her mother gets RIGHT into the whole thing. But when no more notes arrive so that Laura's mum can do a comparison, Laura decides to pen one herself... wait, what? Her logic there kind of lost me!

Then she DOES get another note. Along with every other girl in the class. And then all the boys get notes too. And the principal actually brings in her mother to properly investigate this group of, like, eleven-year-olds receiving secret admirer notes.

There's also the side plot of Laura going from total loner to a temporary "Fringe" member, to then a temporary "Popular". But when hanging out with the Popular group, she finds she doesn't really care for them all that much. But it's better than being alone while her only friend Chloe is abroad. (Also, omg Chloe's emails were so painful to read!) I didn't think about it after reading, but it does now occur to me that there really wasn't any resolution to the friendship/popularity storyline.

And is it just me or was the resolution of the love notes mystery REALLY creepy?! Basically, the local news-agent's nephew and the class's substitute teacher were behind it all, leaving notes for the kids as a sociological experiment. Which I just find really creepy because they're at least in their 20s and these kids are probably only in about grade six! That was just super weird and sketchy and really did creep me out a bit. Also, the part where Laura misunderstood a catchphrase and thought that the teacher and her boyfriend were actually baby-murderers was painfully bad to read. *cringes*

[nia xx · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love ALL the books I''ve read by Margaret Clark - best authour ever

The only thing I didn't like was at times it was a bit boring (took some time to get to the point) but that wasn't too often.

All in all it was a good book 3/5

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cute little story for younger readers.

[girlpower12121 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good book so far! love it