Clifftoppers : The Fire Bay Adventure begins with four cousins Ava, Aiden, Chloe and Josh, spending their holidays as usual with their grandparents and their dog Bella at Clifftoppers farm. The author, Fleur Hitchcock, has given us almost zero information about the children’s families and no physical descriptions of the children. Initially, I thought that the story would be told from Chloe’s perspective, but this wasn’t consistently the case and sometimes it was told from the other’s children’s perspective, which was a bit disorientating.
The story has a good plot. The children become suspicious of a man selling an electronic game with a well-known brand very cheaply at the market, and also a woman selling cheap mobile phones. Later, there are two unrelated fires in the town. The children rather astutely wonder if these events are connected. Aiden is responsible for helping rescue one of the families whose house catches on fire. In the process, their cat goes missing. While looking for the cat, they stumble across a secret tunnel which was used years ago in a smuggling racket.
There isn’t a lot of description of the layout of the town or the beach where the tunnel becomes a cave, which made the scenes hard to imagine. There’s also so little information about the children that it made it difficult to relate to them.
Overall, I didn’t find the story well written, but it’s an engaging plot.
Thanks to Christian School Supplier for providing a free book for review
Book Review : Clifftoppers : The Fire Bay Adventure
