Down in the Piney Woods Book

I really, really loved this, mainly because it is HILARIOUS.

It was wholly far-out--McKay's earlier books make more obvious use of kind of unbelievable coincidences and the supernatural, but they are just so in the tradition of "family adventure story" that I don't really mind. As with many books set/written just ten years prior to the present day, their timelessness is marred by the lack of mobile phones! Because so much of the playing out of the plot relies here on the fact that the kids end up out of communication, and have to trek back and forth to a phone box in the snow. (On second thought, it DOES take place on the North Yorkshire coast, where there is no phone coverage ANYWHERE.)

There, that was a useless review that gives nothing away. It's not McKay's best book, it's not her best series, but it's still a cracking good story. Go read it. You'll laugh your head off and it won't be time wasted.

This is the first of her early books in which I can kind of see McKay gearing up to move on to the Exiles series. She is really the only contemporary author that I wish I could write like.