Being a sister is hard. Older sister Alice, coming down hard off of her first heartbreak, is always calling Phoebe "immature" and "childish," and Phoebe wishes that their relationship could be better, closer, and sweeter. With university costs rising wildly, the family is struggling to stay afloat, and when Phoebe finds an antique Cartier compact at a Paris market, it might be the salvation they all need. It's not just because of the windfall ere's a secret "spell" inside. Phoebe and her best friend Ned set out to follow the spell and visit a list of famous London locations (Trafalgar Square, Twinings Tea) in hopes of fixing what's broken between the sisters, following in the footsteps of a pair of sisters separated by war decades before. True to form, Schroeder's companion to My Secret Guide to Paris (2015) is a quick, charming read. The London setting and focus on two sisters make this ideal for readers who are a bit above the fluffy Cupcake Diaries series and its contemporaries.

When twelve-year-old Brit Phoebe finds a WWII-era letter with a "spell" to bring two people closer, she hopes it'll fix her relationship with older sister Alice. The letter leads Phoebe to London's iconic locations, giving readers a breezy intro to British history. Though this companion to My Secret Guide to Paris is predictable, Schroeder deftly describes the growing pains siblings can experience.

A 12-year-old Londoner hopes that solving a 75-year-old puzzle will mend her relationship with her big sister. The blonde, white English friend from My Secret Guide to Paris (2014) stars in her own adventure. A week after returning from Paris, Phoebe's exasperated with her sister, Alice, who talks of nothing but her Parisian romance and her university applications. A flea-market find from the holiday—one Phoebe suspects is worth rather more than the 10 euros she paid for it—gives her the seed of an idea. Hidden in the antique Cartier compact is a letter from a girl in 1941 to her sister, a wartime evacuee living in the countryside. The letter contains a puzzling series of steps that will "bring two people together"; could it mend the relationship between Phoebe and Alice? Though she's a native, Phoebe takes a tourist's view of London as she follows the magical instructions, whether it's making a wish in Trafalgar Square or traveling from Kensington Gardens while reminiscing about the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton. History lessons abound; one construction worker who opens with informal and dated slang ("crikey") later recites a tidy, encyclopedia-style summary of the history of Wilton's Music Hall. Not meaty but an entertaining, comfortably predictable path through solving the puzzle of sibling rivalry. (Fiction. 9-11)

Gr 4-7 Twelve-year-old Phoebe has a secret. While on an antiquing trip in Paris with her family in My Secret Guide to Paris , she discovered a beautiful antique compact. Phoebe has worked with her dad in his antiques shop since she was a little girl, and she suspects the compact might be valuable enough to help send her sister Alice to college. Things get a bit more complicated when Phoebe opens it and finds a World War II-era letter containing a mysterious spell to bring people closer together "in more ways than one." Following the steps of the spell leads Phoebe on a scavenger hunt around London. Schroeder is at her best when bringing the city of London to life and depicting the complex relationships between siblings.