Today’s book recommendation: THE WINTERTON DECEPTION: FINAL WORD by Janet Sumner Johnson

– Middle Grade Mystery

This middle grade mystery is so, so good! The main protagonists are twelve-year-old twins and the book has so many elements that make it fun: a spelling bee, a mansion with secret passages, a scavenger hunt, hidden treasure, tricky family dynamics, as well as long-buried family secrets.

📚 Here’s the official book promo:

*****
A twisty middle grade mystery for fans of Knives Out, The Inheritance Game, and The Westing Game. Twelve-year-old twins enter a spelling bee in a last-ditch effort to save their family from financial ruin, only to find themselves in a cut-throat competition to uncover a fortune and dark secrets about the wealthy relations they’ve never known.

Hope Smith can’t stand rich people—the dictionary magnate family the Wintertons most of all. Not since she and her twin brother, Gordon, learned that their dad was one. So when Gordon enters the family into the Winterton’s charity spelling bee, Hope wants nothing to do with it. But with their mom losing her job and the family facing eviction from the motel where they live, they desperately need the money, and it looks like Hope doesn’t have much of a choice.

After winning the preliminary round, the Smiths are whisked to Winterton Manor to compete in the official Winterton Bee against their long-lost relatives. Hope wants to get in and out, beat the snobbish family at their own game, and never see them again. But deceased matriarch Jane Winterton had other plans for this final family showdown. Before her death, she set up a clue hunt throughout the manor—an alternate way for Hope and Gordon to get the money that could change their lives.

Still, others are on the trail, too. With tensions at an all-time high, a fortune at stake, and long-simmering family secrets about to boil to the surface, anything could happen.
*****

I especially love the close twin relationship between Hope and Gordon and how they both approach their estranged family and their challenges so differently.

Do yourself a favor and pick up this book! The second one, FAULT LINES, is out now, too!

Happy reading!