When the kids begin to find coins covered in mysterious symbols, they will once again have to work together to decipher codes to discover the messages hidden within them. They all very quickly realize that danger is lurking around every corner as the mind-controlling bad guys are beginning to infiltrate the real world. Their lives had taken some weird turns over the past months, and maybe it’s their mom that needs more protection than they do.

New York Times bestselling author Margaret Peterson Haddix closes out the Greystone Secrets series with the third and final compelling book, The Messengers.īeginning with a recap, the three Greystone kids, Chess, Emma, Finn, are thrilled to have their mom back from the alternate world, as is their friend Natalie. So while we struggled with some slow pacing (this middle grade does clock in over 400 pages) and a few character irritations, it is a well done mystery with many twists and turns culminating in an exciting, heart racing, cliffhanger ending.What to Expect: Mystery, Fantasy, Siblings, and Teamwork Natalie is a fantastic character – quick witted, brave, and her very real struggles adjusting to middle school are quite honest. Further, we got fed up with the siblings’ awful treatment of Natalie – the girl caught up in the mystery trying to help untangle the clues. While the characters are well drawn out we did find the chapters with Finn to really lag the story – something about the “constant need to protect Finn from the truth” angle got really overused and frustrating. When their mom abruptly needs to leave the next day and subsequently disappears the siblings, along with the help of Natalie Mayhew (the daughter of the woman they are now in the care of), must piece together leftover clues to reunite their family.Īt times, the pacing here is slow and quite dense with description, but the clues keep the plot moving along – and really picks up around the 250 page mark where the siblings adventure takes them into the science fiction territory of alternate timelines. The twist? All three kidnapped kids share the same names, birthdays and ages as the Greystones. Three kids from Arizona have been kidnapped. Three siblings: Chess, Emma and Finn Greystone lead a fairly calm existence with their single mother (their dad died when Chess was 4), until they come home from school to find their mother in shock.

While this story is predominantly a mystery, there are very strong elements of science fiction and touches upon surprisingly deep topics like divorce, abusive relationships, grief/guilt, and government corruption. Almost like transformers, there is more to this here book than meets the eye.

The greystone secrets