But an unusual opportunity arises in the form of a bizarre contest run by an eccentric relative: Whoever can survive two weeks in the Archibald Family’s colonial manor will inherit the property. Thanks to her mom’s poor financial planning, they are in danger of losing their business and their home. But as much as Tori loves having fun, she sometimes wishes her mom would act a little more her age. Not many girls have a mom who’d take them to a graveyard for hide-and-seek or fill the bathtub with ice cream for the world’s biggest sundae. Tori Porter is best friends with her mom, and most of the time it’s awesome. (Feb.Formerly titled Colonial Madness, a mother-daughter duo take part in a bizarre family challenge in hopes of winning a fortune in this “light, fun read” ( Booklist) that’s Gilmore Girls meets The Westing Game! Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary Agency. “Maybe we could just develop night vision, like owls, or scream at objects to find them, like bats.”) Making the most of a fun premise, Whittemore ( D Is for Drama) adeptly fuses comic moments with a testy but loving mother-daughter relationship and intriguing details about 17th-century life.
(“Maybe Mom and I didn’t need candles,” thinks Tori during a close encounter with lard. A cute boy on the staff, conniving cousins, witch trials, and various surprises spice up Tori’s travails, and her dry humor is often downright hilarious. To do so, they must compete against the rest of the family in a “test of wit and will,” living as though in colonial times, without any modern conveniences, and winning challenges like cooking gruel and making arrows for target practice. Her mother’s dress shop is struggling, so Tori leaps at a surprise chance to inherit her late Great-Aunt Muriel’s estate. Thirteen-year-old Tori and her widowed mother have always been a team, but Tori feels like the adult in the relationship (an early scene has her mother hiding in a cupboard to scare Tori).
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