Illustrated by Paola Escobar
Keep wildness in your wits and magic in your fingertips.
Prospero
6th book of 2022
First book in Cordelia Hatmaker series
Cordelia comes from a long line of magical milliners, who weave alchemy and enchantment into every hat. In Cordelia’s world, Making – crafting items such as hats, cloaks, watches, boots and gloves from magical ingredients – is a rare and ancient skill, and only a few special Maker families remain.
When Cordelia’s father Prospero and his ship, the Jolly Bonnet, are lost at sea during a mission to collect hat ingredients, Cordelia is determined to find him. But Uncle Tiberius and Aunt Ariadne have no time to help the littlest Hatmaker, for an ancient rivalry between the Maker families is threatening to surface. Worse, someone seems to be using Maker magic to start a war.
It’s up to Cordelia to find out who, and why . . .
Trigger Warning
Death of a parent
Rating
Review
I wanted to read this middle-grade book for a long time and let me tell you, I’m happy to have read it.
I was immersed in the world right away. You are here in a reimagined London with a lot of magic. You are following a girl Cordelia who lives with her family in the Hatmakers house, and this place is a magical world as each element used to create a hat is magic.
In this book, two themes are recurrent: friendship and family. I like how those two are explored; nothing is black or white. For the friendship, you see its evolution, from the beginning to the end, with betrayal reconciliation. I like how it explores it easily and shows that it can change through life and it’s normal. For the family, it is a little more complicated as Cordelia lose her father at sea. You see her evolve with this element alone. You see her remembering some events with her father, and my heart was aching as it’s as heartwarming as heartbreaking.
The book is predictable as an adult, except for one element. However, I didn’t mind as everything was well explained and well done. The only thing I’m not okay with was the cliffhanger at the end.
Liz.
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