Burning The Secrets Away

I have finished the forth Stravaganza City of Secrets by Mary Hoffman, and was I wrong about that ending. There is a lot that happens at the end of this book, but I digress. Back to the beginning, where matt has just transported to Talia, which I’m sure by now you are familiar with and I don’t need to repeat what it is. In this book, we are in the beautiful independent city-state Padavia, where there is a university that prints many books. It seems like a nice enough city with no trouble, but on the inside there are things happening that we twenty-first centurions could barely imagine. It seems that the Stravaganti are going to have to save the day, again.

                Matt wood is the newest stravaganti recruit and he is probably, besides Luciano, my favorite. It’s because he’s not perfect at all. The other stravaganti from Modern London have barely ever screwed up in Talia, with the slight exception of Luciano and Georgia’s solo stravagation with Nick Duke, the amount that Matt does. He messes up a lot by using his anger and jealousy against someone else. The evil eye spell, which causes endless damage, that Matt learned about was put on his girlfriend’s ex, Jago, without Matt even knowing he did it. Not to dismiss him, he did try to put it on Jago even though he thought it wouldn’t happen, but it doesn’t matter, because now Jago’s in the hospital and Ayesha’s bound to find out what Matt has done.

In Padavia, a few surprising things have happened. First, Enrico has changed sides and is now a firm working spy for Luciano and the Stravaganti. After finding him, smelly and wishing he was dead for what he’s done, they take him to their place and hose him down. They feed him and Enrico tells them why he quit working for the vial di Chimici’s. Second, a Manoush boy named Ludo, cousin of Aurelio and Raffaella, has come to Luciano with a warning to beware of the heir. This confused Luciano earlier, but now he gets to see the true answer, and yes, it is one of the di Chimici princes.

That same di Chimici prince seeks out Luciano for a trap. Rodolfo and the Dottore have concluded that it is a trap and tell Luciano not to go. He says he has to go or it would be an insult and they would hate him more. Matt perks up and says that he’ll go with the message that Luciano can’t make it. Rodolfo puts a glamour on him to make him look like Luciano for a small amount of time. This works on the street, but backfires once he gets to the prince’s place. Matt is held hostage and some terrible things happen because of it, especially now that they took his talisman and he can’t get home.

That isn’t even the craziest part, the ending could be deemed better if you like action and suspense. All I will say is that the stravaganti must fight to save the lives of many innocent people because Antonio is too stubborn to repeal the laws. It is so horrible what could have happened, but as always in a good book, it all ends up ok. Maybe not the best, but good enough to leave something for the next book, which was been released last year. I look forward to this book, and whoever the new characters are going to be.

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RED'S ALL STAR RATING: 3 and a half out of 5. Well written, a lot of teen drama mixed with actual life threatening problems. I relate to the characters a lot.

MASS APPEAL: Same as the other books, a lot more stuff for guys than some of the first books in the series. Still a recommendation for anyone, in my opinion.