The Baker family consists of Mum, Dad, and children Millie, Jamie, and Zac, plus their dog Harvey. The family is spending the night at Castle Arden, well the new lodge village on the castle grounds, a little getaway for them and a place to have fun and enjoy themselves.

The children love to play spies and with the new Walkie Talkies that their dad has bought they can now have so much more fun and be in contact with each other, even when they are far away from one another.

On arrival at the castle, the children enjoy taking part in the sword fighting lessons and the archery. They also notice two men that look out of place and not very nice. The children think that they could be up to something so they decide to play real spies once the castle was locked up for the night.

Could the children’s minds be playing tricks on them or are the men really up to something and if so can they stop them or will they put themselves in danger?

Spy Danger is the second book in the Baker Family Series by author Justin Davis. I haven’t read the first book but from my reading, it would seem that they work well as standalone too. The children are your average fun, inquisitive kids who really enjoy playing spies so when they see two strange men on the castle grounds they decide that maybe, just maybe, they might be up to no good and want to investigate.

The story features lots of mysteries and intrigue and is like a mini sleuth novel for kids as the children have to decode the clues. The illustrations throughout help to bring the story to life. I also loved that the family dog Harvey gets his own voice too. He’s a very clever and funny dog.

This is a book that older children from about seven years onward would enjoy, especially if they are confident readers. The book is well written and captures your imagination and is exciting the whole way through.

About the Author

Justin grew up and lived in a lovely rural village in East Yorkshire before moving to Northamptonshire, where he lives with his wife, Nina, and his three beautiful children.

Justin’s desire to write is very much rooted in his love of reading and writing a book is something that had been on ‘life’s list’ for many years!

Wanting to pass this love of books onto his children, Justin started to play with the idea of writing a children’s story. After completing a writing course, and after much coffee drinking and many screwed up pieces of A4, Escape from Nettle Farm (in its first incarnation) was complete! It then went through many painful rewrites and edits to get to the stage where Justin was ready to say, ‘Finished!’

Justin wanted to write something that would be fun and exciting for parents to read to children, or for children to read independently. Escape from Nettle Farm was a finalist in the 2017 People’s Book Prize and received the Red Ribbon Award in the 2016 Wishing Shelf Book Awards.