Whimsy and Woe by Rebecca McRitchie

Title: Whimsy and Woe

Author: Rebecca McRitchie

Genre: Mystery Adventure

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 18^th March 2019

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 416

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: ADVENTUROUS AND OUTLANDISH, WHIMSY AND WOE WILL HOOK KIDS IN FROM THE FIRST PAGE.’
— Books+Publishing, four stars

After being abandoned by their thespian parents, Whimsy and Woe Mordaunt are left in the care of their austere Aunt Apoline.

Forced to work in Apoline’s boarding house, slaving at the beck and call of outlandish and demanding guests, and sharpening the thorns of every plant in the poisonous plant garden, Whimsy and Woe lose all hope that their parents will ever return. Until one day, quite by accident, the siblings stumble upon a half-charred letter that sets them on a course to freedom and finding their parents.

Richly illustrated by award-winning illustrator Sonia Kretschmar, this first book in an exciting new series by talented debut author Rebecca McRitchie is filled with mischief, monocles, mystery and mice.

Notable Book – CBCA Book of the Year Awards

Shortlisted – 2019 Davitt Awards

Shortlisted – 2018 Speech Pathology Book of the Year Awards

Shortlisted – 2022 West Australian Young Readers’ Book Awards

~*~

Set during the Victorian era, Whimsy and Woe Mordaunt live a happy life with their thespian parents, who are often in plays and take their children on grand adventures. But one day, quite inexplicably, their parents disappear, and the children are sent to live a desolate and depressing life (is there any other kind in a novel set during Victorian times or from the Victorian era?) with their stern and austere aunt, Aunt Apoline in her boarding house, the Idle Slug. They are at her beck and call, serving demanding and outlandish guests, and tending a poisonous garden whilst wondering when or indeed if their parents will return. When they find a half-charred letter and then discover that their aunt is going to sell them to the outrageous and ignominious Ignatius Solt and his equally demanding and cruel wife, Whimsy and Woe run away with all they have left to find their parents, and are chased along the way to a small town where nobody seems to live, a one-legged  pirate, and have to find their way out of a scary storm, a swamp and run from a wolf with a new friend –  all to find their parents. But will Whimsy and Woe be successful?

This is the first book in a duology that came out several years ago, and I’ve just stumbled across it recently, and I fell into this world wholly. It’s a typical Victorian orphan set-up but with a twist -Rebecca McRitchie uses all the well-known tropes of a Victorian story – orphans, slaving away in a dark boarding house, a whole lot of people trying to stop them, and a journey to find out the truth about their family and whether they are truly orphaned or not. The latter part might be less Victorian than it is modern, because where the Victorian orphan stories always kill off the parents completely, in these sensible days, we do not always need to kill off the parents for child characters to have grand adventures – we simply need to – redistribute them – for a while until our heroes can complete their quest, and it seems that this is what has happened for our wonderfully whimsical Whimsy and Woe. Our intrepid orphans have an onerous task ahead of them – one I am sure they are quite capable of undertaking, and one where I found myself cheering them on at every turn to succeed, and it was fabulous!

Whimsy and Woe are of course dispatched to a miserable existence upon the unfortunate and untimely disappearance – something that those who are not thespians despair of – it is the way of thespians, we are told in the book, to do so. And yet … like Whimsy and Woe, I knew there would have to be more to the story of their disappearance than we are being told. Like any good mystery, the clues are dropped slowly, and allow the reader to follow on with the characters as they find out what has happened. I loved that Whimsy and Woe used their talents and skills to get past people on the train, in villages, and to find people who could help them – even when it did land them in a little bit more trouble, there were one or two characters whom they could rely on and work with to abscond from people like Apoline and those who were trying to stop them, like the Solts. This worked well for the story – it is how the trope is used that made it successful more than the fact that the trope was used – I find this in all the books I read. It is what the author does with tropes or common plots that gives the story its life.

It is a fun book, the kind of book that I would have read when I was younger and that I still love now, so readers aged nine and older will get something magical out of this book about a pair of siblings determined to save their family. The relationship in this book is written really well, and I think Rebecca McRitchie did a great job of bringing Whimsy and Woe’s world to life – and I can’t wait to read the second book to find out if Whimsy and Woe find their parents!