Emily lives in London with her parents. She’s eleven years old, is always getting herself into trouble because of her ‘big gob’ and has a typical relationship with her parents: she finds them extremely embarrassing. But when her mum goes missing, followed by her dad, she knows she has to find them. This is where Emily’s life veers off into another world, literally.
Read and Trinder have created a fabulous alternative world populated by creatures magical and mystical, good and evil. This parallel London is caught in a Victorian time-warp, with a steampunk edge. The descriptions of places are brilliant. I have to share this as an example:

“It was some kind of mail sorting room but it wasn’t a modern one; there were no conveyor belts, machines, or bright lights. Instead there were stack upon stack of wooden pigeonholes, and teetering shelves, and ladders balanced between them. It was lit from above with brass-fitted gas lamps, shining down on sorting desks with pneumatic tubes at the back of them, rattling and hissing and thumping as they pumped out more and more letters and parcels on to desks already mounded high with them."

Emily is a very likeable heroine: feisty and not afraid to speak her mind - which often leads to trouble and further complications. Her character develops as she searches for her parents, and she quickly realizes how important her parents are to her. As she admonishes herself after a good cry, “there’s only so long you can sit and flap for, and then you just have to get on with it. This was another one of her mum’s sayings."

Emily’s quest for her parents in this alternative London is a totally engrossing story, which will appeal to readers from upper primary to lower secondary. Fans of Harry Potter and Nevermore will definitely enjoy this fantastic tale.