What do You think about Sammy Keyes And The Sisters Of Mercy (1999)?
This is a great mystery story of Sammy Keys, an average teenage girl. The mystery starts in the opening chapter, when she is doing community service at a local church. Sammy sees a girl walk in, then a few minutes latter, the head of her church calls her into his office and accuses her of stealing his most prized possession, his cross. When she denies it, he kicks her out of his office. Sammy doesn't see the mysterious girl again, until latter in the story. They become the best of friends, and all Sammy's earlier doubts are cleared. As she slowly eliminates suspects, greater suspicions arise about the remaining people.The tensions rise as you near the end of the book, and you don't know who stole the cross until the very end. I thought this was a great book, and it was a great way to tie high school life, with mystery.
—Daniel
OMG this book is horrible. I love thrillers but with this book I yawned all the time!I tried to understand that this book was written in a very very very simple way because i suppose it is for children. but really? where is the magic of words? I read many books for children or preteens but this one has no sense, has no suspance AT ALL! Sammy is not a great character I read 'til page 54 and I did not appreciate any character, and we shouldn't even talk about the plot! Well, I gave it a chance but ... I just wasted my time so I closed the book and I'll never open it again. If you pay a publicist to tell that your book is full of suspance and mystery please, at least try to write something like that. When the priest tells Sammy that he thinks she stole something ( i don't even remember what!) she was like what? uhm? me!? ( ad I yawned! ) then she goes to help poor people and then there were pages and pages about softball or another sport ( more yawning), and later she thought again about the stolen thing. What? Where is the suspance?I rated this book 1 star just because ... I do not even know why. Maybe becase I did not stop it at page 3. ( but, maybe, it would have been better!)
—Daisy Honeywell
Great mystery series for grades 4-6. Sammy is a fascinating detective character--abandoned by her mom and living in senior housing with grandma, friends with everyone in the neighborhood and softball player extraordinaire. She is smart and thoughtful, and in this book uses her skill to solve a crime at the local Catholic Church where she's doing community service following a badly executed plan to get back at a nasty kid. Our lunchtime book group (grade 5) ate this one up and went looking for more.
—Judi Paradis
