The Spook's Secret by Joseph Delaney: Book Review

My Review

My Rating: 4/5

SPOILER FREE

In The Spook’s Secret by Joseph Delaney we find out a lot about the Spook’s past, which is something that has been hinted at a little before. I’m glad this was done this early in the fantasy series, as it’s good to wait a bit for mysteries to unfold, but if it’s left too long, I get bored.

It’s winter, so the Spook and Thomas travel with Alice to the winter house in Anglezarke. The setting in The Spook’s Secret is appropriately creepy, and there’s a crazy, ex-apprentice of the Spook running around the moor.

It’s difficult to talk about The Spook’s Secret without giving away spoilers, but I’ll not go into any right now. Instead, I’ll talk about the relationships between the characters. Thomas and the Spook struggle to get a long (in previous books too) because the Spook doesn’t trust anyone very easily.

A lot of the trust issues here revolve around Alice, as the Spook still doesn’t really trust her, but Thomas is always pulling away from his master towards Alice. This can get irritating at times, as Thomas doesn’t seem to be able to see the bigger picture.

This had been a running theme of his characterisation for the first three books of the series, but you have to remember that he is only a young teenager, so he had a lot of growing up to do.

The plot for The Spook’s Secret itself is a little all over the place, but I still thought it was great. There are two main threats to overcome, but of course only one of them is the primary threat of the book.

Again, it is hinted that the Dark is growing in power, and soon there will be even more difficult issues in The County for Thomas and the Spook to deal with.