Title: Ella at Eden: New Girl

Author: Laura Sieveking

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Scholastic Australia

Published: 1^st February 2020

Format: Paperback

Pages: 192

Price: $15.99

Synopsis: Ella has started at her new high school, and Eden College is everything she hoped it would be. She is getting to know her new friends and enjoying everything Eden has to offer. Until things start to get complicated. She accidentally insults Saskia, the school diva, there could be a ghost in the dorm and items have started to mysteriously disappear.

Can Ella catch the Eden thief?

Join Ella in the first book of this exciting new adventure.

~*~

Ella is about to start a new school – a boarding school, which means being away from her sister Olivia, brother Max, and the rest of her family. Going to Eden College means being with her best friend though, and Ella can’t wait to spend time with Zoe and her new friends. Yet there are other girls like Saskia who don’t seem to like Ella. And soon, things start to go missing – around the time Saskia tells her about the school ghost. Determined to find out what happened and write a stellar story for the school newspaper, Ella decides to investigate what is happening.

Scholastic contacted me to review this – which is always exciting and having worked on some of the Ella and Olivia books by Yvette Poshoglian, one of the authors who works with Ella and Olivia for Scholastic, I knew it would be a lovely and interesting read. I knew the characters – so it was interesting to see Ella at another stage of her life, and it is always fun to start a new series. However, as a quiz writer, whenever I read a review book from Scholastic, I start thinking about quiz questions – which is quite fun but not necessary for a review book.

I really enjoyed this book. It starts a new series that will allow those who have read the earlier books with Ella and Olivia to grow with Ella and her sister, and also, gives enough information for new readers to Ella’s world to enjoy it and engage with it and the other characters.  Told in the first person, we see the world through Ella’s eyes and experiences, which are fun to read about and experience with her in this new and adventurous world she has been thrust into, the same world she is keen to explore.

Ella’s friendships grow throughout the novel, and I love the way she works to make friends with Violet throughout the book, whose story is also very interesting and finding out what about Violet’s secrets strengthens their bond and Ella discovers she has a new friend. This book is filled with ideas and themes of friendship, coming of age and growing up, as well as finding out who you are separate from what you have known up until when something changes dramatically, and for Ella, that is heading off to Eden College.

This looks to be a promising series, and I look forward to more about Ella at Eden and what she gets up to with her new friends in her new school.