Kitty Hawk and the Curse of the Yukon Gold: Book One of the Kitty Hawk Flying Detective Agency Series (Kitty Hawk Flying Detective Agency, #1)

by Iain Reading

• ISBN10: 1502300877
• ISBN13: 9781502300874
• Publish Date: 3 December 2012
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 272
• Language: English

Reviews

[Baroness Book Trove]

Kitty Hawk and the Curse of the Yukon Gold by Iain Reading was an okay book. This book to me was confusing at first. This book centers around a girl named Kitty Hawk who is a pilot. I thought this book would have been more Nancy Drew-like, but it didn't quite get there.

What I like about this book:
• Cool information on the humpback whales. I did not know how they fed and that there are different subspecies of the humpback whale species. It was quite interesting to read the main character using her plane to follow the daily paths. Though what she was planning on doing with this information wasn't completely explained.
• I liked relearning about the Klondike Gold Rush. It was a pretty cool thing to revisit and I liked the interesting tidbits Mr. Reading added in. I did not know about Harrison Ford having a personal plane so that was pretty cool to learn.

What I disliked about the book:
• That there is two prologues’ and two epilogues’. That to me was just really confusing and didn’t make any sense. I mean I get the first one setting up for the whole series but it was still a bit weird.
• Another thing that I disliked was that the chapters to me were divided into the scenes which made it seem like a mini-chapter within the book. That to me was very confusing.
• I still didn’t get much with why Amanda Phillpott is Kitty Hawk’s enemy.
• I think the book might have worked better in third person instead of first person.
• I still didn’t necessarily get with why Kitty cared if the boat had gold on it or not since it didn’t really affect her all that much.

What I was iffy on about the book:
• How could Kitty not have told anyone what she was doing before going to check on the campfire? I mean if it was me I would have just left it alone.
• That she could fall for a guy without really knowing that much about him. And especially when she knew that she wasn’t going to stay there for very long.
• That she now considers the people, that started the campfire, as her family. I mean to me that is just plain weird. I wouldn’t think of them like that.

Kitty Hawk and the Curse of the Yukon Gold by Iain Reading is an interesting book and one that I wouldn’t really recommend to my readers. I am giving this book three stars because I couldn’t get into it and I just don’t get how the gold and the whales really fit in together as a story. It also took me eight days to read this book and that is just something that I take into consideration as well when reading a book.

Anyways until the next time enjoy this review brought to you by
Baroness’ Book Trove.

I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

If you would like to read more reviews like this one please go to baronessbooktrove.com

[Nessa Luna]

Read this review and others on October Tune!

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This has not changed my opinion on this book in any way!

When I first read the summary for this book, I kind of thought it would be a children's book (probably also because of the cover), so I was a bit reluctant to read it. Sure I've read many children's books in the past but I had realised that they weren't really what I wanted to read anymore. But I did end up saying yes and when I started reading the book I realised it wasn't a children's story at all. I actually quite enjoyed it!

This book tells the story of Kitty Hawk, a young girl who's just graduated from high school and wants to go to Alaska to study humpback whales. We follow her as she flies her own plane to Alaska and studies these animals for the whole summer. But then, she gets involved in something dangerous that could cost her her life.

I have to say, at some points there is some story telling, and though I like story telling in books, it felt a bit like an info-dump to me. Sure, the story needed to be told, but not everything all in one go. So yeah, I did like hearing the history of the Gold Rush and learn about whales but at some points I just got so bored with those stories that I wanted to skip ahead to the end of them.

There were also some minor things that didn't really make sense to me; like at one point, when Kitty had landed safely in Juneau, her friend's aunt says 'you made it', to which Kitty replies 'me either'?! (Okay maybe just a little mistake, but I just found it a really odd answer to what was said). And later on, when Kitty's in trouble, she just decides to help out these guys rather than try to get away from them. Sure they turned out to be kind of innocent in the end, but still, you don't just help your kidnappers like that. But besides that, I really liked the story. It was very well written, and lots of things were described beautifully, it kind of made me want to visit Alaska/Canada.

As for the characters, I liked Kitty. She's adventurous and very preceptive, but at some points I just didn't really understand her actions (like what I said underneath the spoiler tag). There was also a guy named Edward (whose name was revealed after Kitty stated thinking about Bella and Edward from Twilight, ha ha ha). I kind of thought he was nice, but I remembered thinking he was going to be quite important somewhere in the story. And I turned out to be right, so yay for intuition! Then there were the 'bad guys', whose names you'll find out when you read the book, and honestly I didn't really think they were that good in what they were doing. From what I understood, they planned on living out in the woods for months eating only energy bars. Don't think that's going to keep you alive, guys!

In the end, I really liked Kitty Hawk and the Curse of the Yukon Gold, and I'll certainly check out the rest of the series. I do hope there's a lot less info-dump story telling going on in the other books, and I hope that the next bad guys she bumps into are a bit smarter than these ones. Then again, these bad guys weren't really bad guys after all.

My opinion on this book in one gif: