Samantha Wolf Mysteries, Book Eight - The Legend of Shadow Mountain

The Samantha Wolf Mystery series has turned out to be a surprisingly fun series to read.  It's kind of a shame that the series is not picked up by a major publisher and marketed for sale in bookstores and such.  There are way too few mystery series for children on the shelves today - everything seems geared for fantasy or school-oriented series, and not even Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys have very many books on the shelves (which is so sad, when I can remember the bookstores, and even department stories, carried shelves and shelves of those series!).  But, until such time as the Samantha Wolf Mystery series becomes the next big thing in bookstores, I'll continue to watch for them to show up on Amazon and keep buying them!

The Legend of Shadow Mountain is the eighth book in the series, and this time around Samantha and her friends face something much more frightening than a mystery to solve - they face the danger of the Alaskan wilderness!  Sam, Ally and Cassy are excited to be flying up to Alaska to spend time with Sam's father, who has been up in Alaska for months working, earning money to support the family.  Sam's brother (Hunter) and Ally's brother (John) are joining them, and they share the small plane ride up the coast with a young woman and her toddler son.  Everything is going just fine, and Sam is just beginning to think this trip may not hold any adventure to it, when the pilot decides to take a quick detour to show them some of the beautiful mountain ranges where panning for gold was a big thing back in the day - but that detour turns to terror when the plane ends up going down into the woods, crashing and severely injuring the pilot!

Ellis sets aside the mystery element in exchange for a survival story, as John and Hunter must lead the three girls on a trek up the mountain to find a spot high enough to send a signal that they hope emergency planes may see in order to rescue them.  The pilot may not have long to live, and with the mountainside woods filled with bears and other possible dangers, the five youngsters are forced to stick together, put aside their differences, and face their fears to make the trek through the dense woods.  Of course, there is also the legend of the Taquka-aq, the Kodiak bear, which is said to protect the infamous Shadow Mountain.  No one dares climb that mountain, and those that do have faced dire consequences!  So, of course, it is that very same Shadow Mountain that Sam and her friends must climb in order to burn the signal fires for help!

And, Ellis can't help but sneak in a little bit of a mystery into the story involving a gold miner who fell in love with one of the locals, only to disappear one day into the mountain, never to be seen again.  As the group makes their way up the mountainside, they come across a small cabin that may have been used by that miner back in the day, and Sam notices a strange symbol on the lantern in the cabin ... finding a similar symbol carved into a tree not that far away ... and yet another similar symbol on another tree.  Just what do these symbols mean?  Sam, Ally, Cassy, Hunter, and John not only figure out the meaning, but they ultimately uncover a shocking find that could lay to rest a mystery that has been unsolved for more than 50 years!  (Leave it to Sam to turn a dangerous situation into yet another mystery!)

This is not your typical Samantha Wolf mystery, but it is a refreshing change of pace that allows for all of the characters to show some of the growth their characters have been experiencing as the series progresses.  And that is another thing I enjoy about the series - the characters are not stagnant.  They age, they learn, they grow, they mature - they are "real" people.  Yes, the books continue to be written in present tense, which can be a bit jarring when 99% of the books you read are all in past tense, but the stories are engaging enough that by the third or fourth chapter, you no longer take notice (and I'm not sure if it's because my mind is automatically reverting everything to past tense, or if it's just because the stories are THAT good!).

I still have several more books in this series to read, and I hope that Ellis plans to keep the series going indefinitely, so that we can watch Sam age well into her teens and solve hundreds of mysteries!

RATING:  9 antique lockets out of 10 for changing things up a bit and placing Sam and her friends in a situation where it will take more than a few clues to get them out of it!