Just So Stories

Harper Collins Australia

January 2025

• ISBN: 9780008660956
• ISBN 10: 0008660956
• Imprint: HarperCollins GB
• List Price: 17.99 AUD

While it took me a while to get to this on the review shelf, and then it’s taken me a few weeks to get the review written, it only took me two sessions to actually read this completely enthralling and wildly different fantasy.

Meticulous – Metty – Jones, like most other children, gets her magical tattoo on her 10th birthday. These supposedly indicate the child’s fate or future. But Metty’s is disturbing – a skull in the palm of a purple glove. She can only interpret this as meaning she is destined to be a murderer.

Her hand that bears the tattoo is always covered as she gets older, and her father, Captain Moral Jones, has taken her to live in a remote part of Wales, so she also believes her father has reached the same conclusion. But a year after receiving her tattoo, Metty sees her father ‘disappear’ out on the hillside and strange people are responsible. Her only companion is the strange little gargoyle which has somehow come to life, when her mysterious Aunt Mags turns up.

It’s the start of a whole new life for Metty as she accompanies her wildly eccentric and exotic Aunt to New London, and the Jones family home, and the true meaning of her tattoo gradually unfolds over the next few weeks.

She attempts to track down those responsible for her father’s disappearance, while learning new family secrets, makes a new friend, wonders why her Uncle Rupert is so different to both her father and her aunt, tries to understand her wayward mother and runs into the kind of danger that no other 11-year-old (except perhaps HP or Morrigan Crow) has encountered.

Dark forces are gathering in New London and, in particular, Metty, and she is in extreme danger. Extricating herself is a revelation of her true intellect, initiative and, her secret power.

What a ride this one is! Your older readers from around Year 5 upwards, especially those who embrace fantasy with a real dose of evil menace will lap it up. I’m super excited to find out that is probably the start of a series, I’m told there is at least one more title in the publisher’s list already!! It’s an unreserved 5 💀💀💀💀💀 rating from me.

[PS by the time you read this, I will also have a new tattoo!]