As a kid in the early 90s, I loved borrowing paperback chapter books from the local library and devouring them over the course of a few days. Kid mystery books were a big deal back then. There’s a lot of nostalgia for The Boxcar Children series, The Westing Game, or From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
Author Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar is carrying on the tradition of the middle grade mystery with her novel, The Hidden Diary: Bone Chillers #2. Check out my review of The Hidden Diary followed by an interview with Sachar here!
The Hidden Diary plot summary
Twelve-year-old Alyssa Morgan has just moved to Webbing with her mother and six-year-old brother, Billy, after their parents recently divorced. There, they settle into their old farmhouse which is still furnished with the former owners’ belongings. The family soon learns that the McMullen family who had lived there before vanished 50 years ago, and the townspeople consider the house to be haunted.
Soon after moving in, Alyssa meets a boy her age named Jeremy Coverdale. After showing her around town, the two become fast friends. Alyssa and Jeremy then decide to try to solve the mystery of what happened to the family who had lived in Alyssa’s house before her.
While unpacking her new room, Alyssa finds a diary written by Elaine McMullen, the 12-year-old daughter and one of the missing members of the McMullen family. Using this diary and information gained by talking to the townspeople who were old enough to remember the McMullen family, Alyssa and Jeremy set out to solve the mystery of their disappearance.
The story
The Hidden Diary is a kid-friendly mystery novel with a very dark premise that young sleuths can devour without it permanently scarring them like an adult mystery novel could. There are high stakes and a set up that pays off in terms of bringing readers a legitimate mystery to follow along with.
Without giving anything away, I will say that any paranormal moments are kept to a minimum. This is not a deep dive ghost story. It’s completely focused on being a mystery novel, and I was about halfway through reading when I realized that.
That being said, the story does stay very focused on its mystery while still providing a lot of interesting backstories that help you get to know these characters, this town, and the history that is relevant to understanding the series of events that have unfolded leading up to this moment.
The story takes place in the modern day, though the characters use very primitive methods in their detective work. Alyssa and Jeremy comb through newspaper articles on microfilm rather than Google. Alyssa frequently forgets to bring her phone or even check her phone when she is out roaming the town with Jeremy. And the two have no qualms about knocking on the doors of strangers to conduct sit-down interviews rather than send text or social media messages.
The characters
I really liked Alyssa from the start. She has that oldest child quality of being the surrogate parent, particularly when the book starts and there is no second parent in the picture. She is super responsible and has a bit of an obsession with cleaning that probably could be framed more as an OCD symptom in response to the divorce rather than a typical personality trait. As a result, Alyssa often comes across as an adult’s version of a perfect kid rather than a realistic one.
Jeremy too is not your average preteen boy. He pursues the friendship with Alyssa right away and is very kind and accommodating to the new family. I wish more 12-year-old boys were like him, but I was willing to overlook the unrealistic parts of him so that Alyssa had a close confident to help her explore the mystery.
There really aren’t any other kids in the story aside from Billy Morgan. He’s six but seems older. He takes on the part of the kid who is angered about the divorce rather than sad from it. Other than that, he doesn’t have much of a part to play in the story other than serving as the typical younger sibling for Alyssa to develop her mindset as the surrogate parent.
The dialogue among all of the characters is very generic and probably my largest criticism about the entire book. I don’t think modern teen speak would have been the way to go as modern slang is, and always has included, a very temporarily in-style vocabulary. However, if the kids in particular had talked more like modern kids, I think it would have done a lot more for the story as a whole.
The pacing and tone
This book is a fast read. It really hits the ground running but also knows when to slow down in order to provide some back story and character development to fatten up the story to add some heart to the mystery. I really liked getting to know the characters in these smaller moments, and I loved the small town, summer setting for our heroes to explore in.
Excerpts from Elaine’s diary are also interspersed throughout the story. Alyssa reads through it slowly so that the information that is crucial to solving the mystery is slowly revealed. It’s one of those plot devices that many fictional stories use just to drag the story out when in reality, she would have just flipped to the final entry to uncover the information needed to help solve the mystery.
I also would have liked to have learned more about Elaine as a person. Her entries are mostly focused on the backstory of the mystery itself, not so much her interests or personality.
The mystery itself is pretty easy for an adult reader to figure out, so I don’t know if a younger reader would figure it out as easily. One thing that makes it so predictable is Jeremy and Alyssa’s hatred for a particular character who really doesn’t come off as nefarious as
I also didn’t understand why the disappearance of the McMullen family was labeled by the police as a murder without any bodies or signs of foul play in the home. Speaking of the home, Alyssa and Jeremy search for clues from the outside, via the townspeople and newspapers, and they never search the house itself for clues to the disappearance, evidence of ghosts, or the buried treasure that some have speculated about, despite having complete access to the inside and outside of the entire property.
My recommendation
Despite its weaknesses, I still had fun reading The Hidden Diary. I think the bones of it are enough to make it a fun summer mystery story. I also love how the author was not afraid to put her young characters in very dangerous situations. And even though it’s not realistic, removing a lot of the modernism from its modern story gave it a very timeless feel that I hope its young readers will appreciate as much as its older ones.
Does your hometown have an unsolved mystery or ghost story? If so, share yours in the comments below!
My rating
An interview with Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar
Are there any stories, real or imagined, that inspired your novel?
A story I’ve been drawn to throughout my life is the Greek myth of the Trojan princess Cassandra—my namesake! The god Apollo had given her the gift of prophecy, but he became angered with her (unfairly) and turned the gift into a curse. She knew the terrors that would befall her city, but no one would believe her.
This is connected to The Hidden Diary since Elaine, the girl who keeps the diary, has concerns about the intentions of another character, but her parents dismiss her worries. If only they had listened, much like if the people of Troy heeded Cassandra’s warnings, events would have turned out very differently.
Did/do you keep a diary?
I don’t now, but I kept one from childhood up until my early twenties. I used to chronicle everything I did, down to the animals I saw at the zoo! After I became a mom, I stopped—I didn’t have time for the constant upkeep. I have the tendency to beat myself up if I get behind in something, and I had enough to do without tracking every nuance of my life.
I know that diaries don’t need to do this, but it was always the way I handled my entries. In the end, it was a burden, and it was easier for me to let it go.
Jeremy takes Alyssa under her wing very soon after her arrival in town. Did you frame him as a loner who jumps from friend to friend or a lonely kid who has been looking for a friend?
I don’t think of him as a loner at all. He’s a well-adjusted, sporty kid whom I believe has plenty of friends. I imagine him hanging out with some other friends besides Alyssa during the summer, but Alyssa is conveniently located near him, and he becomes deeply entrenched in helping solve the mystery. During the school year, they’ll both spend time with other friends instead of just each other.
The characters all have interesting backstories. Did you take inspiration from anything in particular to develop these back stories? Do you have any other details about these characters or their histories that didn’t make it into the novel?
There are a lot of complicated family dynamics in the story, especially involving absent parents. One person we don’t meet but who’s important to the story is Alyssa’s dad.
Alyssa and her mom (maybe not Billy, at his young age) would almost definitely have noticed signs of his discontent over the years, but many of us ignore red flags in our loved ones. It was more important to me to show the remaining members of the family moving on without him instead of involving the dad more in the novel since he chose to no longer be in his children’s lives.
The mystery they try to solve is a good distraction for Alyssa who is consumed with her parents’ recent divorce. What advice do you have for children who are dealing with their parents’ recent divorce?
While I grew up with two parents in a loving marriage, many of my friends have been the children of divorce or have gone through divorce themselves. Every family is different, and the reasons for divorce are varied, so my advice is that it’s okay to have feelings and to talk about them with a trusted friend and/or adult.
How did you make the decision to set Elaine’s story in the 1970s? Is there a particular decade that you’d love to visit if ever possible?
I wanted to pick a decade that was far enough away that most of the town had moved on from the mystery but not so far away that almost no one involved then would be left. A decade I’m drawn to is the 1920s since I used to teach The Great Gatsby for many years and love the style of the era, but that decade was too distant for what I needed to do in the story.
Do you have a favorite character?
I identify the most with Alyssa, of course, since she’s the narrator and I walked in her shoes throughout the story. She tries so hard to be strong for her mother and brother that she doesn’t always give enough time and attention to her own feelings, and I think she’s easy to relate to for that reason.
Any plans for more stories about Alyssa and Jeremy?
At this point, no. I think they’ve been through enough, and I want them to get to enjoy the rest of their childhoods without going through more trouble!
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Buy it!
Buy a copy of Keeper of Corpses, a short story collection by Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar here, and help support local bookstores! This is an affiliate link, and I will earn a commission on any sales.
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