Well hello there!
I've reviewed Ann Kraft's work before, The Opera Ghost Lives and The Red Diamond of Nadirijna.
After reading The Phantom's Legacy: Family Secrets I can tell, for sure, that Ann is an amazing author, with lovable characters and deep family plots. On the other hand, I believe that her being amazing tends to let me down on sequels. I've been slightly put down by The Red Diamond of Nadirijna and now Ann shows me just how amazing she is, again, which makes me think the problem isn't me, it is that Erik on that book really just isn't quite as cool.
The Phantom's Legacy - Family Secrets is a contemporary book, where we meet Amanda Slaughter, a history teacher, who loves antiques. She ends up buying a dresser that is full with old papers and evidence on a long lost mistery.
Her "old stuff" must have a story, they can't be just old stuff, so the owner of these "old stuff" agrees to let her buy a piano, that just happens to come with the owner's great-grandchild, Ayrik.
The plot develops sort of the same way that The Opera Ghost Lives - they meet, they work together to discover some of the plot hidden by a deceased family member of one of the two and they end up finding out much more about others and themselves than they intended to.
I can't speak much more about it or I would be spoiling it, but I must say that I fell in love with the characters. Ann sure knows how to build loveable people, with flawed backgrounds and definitely confusing families.
We, who read the previous books, know in a second that Ayrik is Erik and Amalie's descendant, Louisa's family. But I'd be a bit happier if there was someone in the family with the same deformity as Erik's, maybe not on their face, I don't know, since it was supposed to be passed around by family/blood line (as stated on Book #1 - The Opera Ghost Lives), so it would make sense that on a large family, at least someone... But it's ok.
Reading this book we learn more about Louisa and how her life went after those childhood years we saw, how she grew up to build a wonderful and loving family.Most of all, you can read the first chapter HERE, buy the book autographed HERE or on Amazon HERE.
