Daisy Thistledown is happy with her life following her exuberant mother around the world chasing the next big news story. Daisy adores her mother, and is never happier than when at her side, so she is very concerned when her mother decides to put her in a boarding school for a short time while she goes after a story in the Amazon River basin. Daisy hates the school and when her mother doesn't return by the end of term, she senses something has gone wrong. She goes to a garden her mother and she always went to together, and there finds a magic door into another world. She soon discovers that this new world which is a botanical paradise, is connected to her family, but is also in danger. She teams up with other children her age and together they try to figure out which of the adults is the traitor trying to bring an end to all they love.
The "through the magic door" is a pretty common trope for middle grade fantasy, but this book does it better than most. It is clearly a "save the environment" book, but the author really does seem to have a genuine connection to and love of nature that shines through in her writing. It is almost worth reading for the nature descriptions and world building alone. Daisy, and even the secondary characters, are fully developed, interestingly flawed, and show good character development through the course of the story. The plot twists are a little predictable to me who have read literally hundreds of middle grade fantasies, but I didn't ever get bored and will probably read the next in the series. (2023, 333p.)
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