The Great St. Mary’s Day Out (The Chronicles of St Mary’s #7.5)

Ok. I’m old and shouldn’t be reading what might be YA literature, but maybe I identify with our heroine. Whatever, Jodi Taylor is a wonderful writer and additionally has great editors. People are actually reading and re-reading her writing for typos. I never know what to expect in what are always action-packed stories. I’ve read all Ms. Taylor’s writings (at least what is published on Amazon) and I know I’ve come across a seriously funny person. She must be fun at parties. Someone has to have come up with the smart-ass quips that are liberally spread throughout all her stories.
I’m trying to get friends to read her series because I know they’ll get hooked on her hysterical, complex and completely memorable characters and storylines.

The St. Mary’s novellas are usually more silly and less interested in history than the novels. This one one has both these qualities to a greater degree than usual. The purpose of the jump is to watch a 1601 performance of Hamlet at the Globe with the Bard himself playing the Ghost (only somehow Shakespeare’s costume catches fire and Markham recites the lines in his place). A major subplot involves a man trying to take passage for the New World (to escape his wife and children). In 1601. When there were no British colonies to visit. I found the playing fast and loose with history more distracting than amusing. And that’s fairly rare in this series.

Can you imagine Dr. Bairstow granting a holiday for the entire staff? Yes, he did, and it was to see Hamlet performed at the Globe Theatre…the actual Globe back in 1601 and Shakespeare himself is playing the ghost. Oh wait, is he really?? Well, stay tuned because the entire staff is sorted into three groups by Max to be sure they dont all get in trouble at the same time. Youd expect it to be Max and her group who cause the trouble but in this story, it is the other two groups that have some problems. Dr. Bairstow does manage to get to the theatre in time to see most of the play but the third group has a bigger problem and they never make it to the play. They all reconnect after the play and make it back to St. Marys intact and as always Markham is in trouble. Give yourself a nice hour or so and read this story. Always a fun read.

I’m the biggest St. Mary’s fan there is, and I liked this story, but I should have liked it more. This is a short story (the equivalent of 1-2 chapters), like several in the past, and for fans like me, it’s great to read about this group of characters we’ve grown to love and cherish, no matter what. Like the ad blurb says, this time they go back as a group to watch a Shakespeare play in the Globe Theater, and several of them get into trouble in various ways. Unfortunately, all these adventures occur “elsewhere” in the narrative, and the reader only gets a distant impression of them. The characters at the Globe get into issues, too, but these are described relatively briefly and undramatic-ly. In terms of content and drama and interest, this is certainly the skimpiest of all the St. Mary’s short stories; too bad, because with the tiniest more effort and fleshing out, this could have been SO much better. Also, we’ve come to expect something of historical significance or something advancing the plot arcs of the other characters in the short stories, and I didn’t recognize any of that here.

I chose this book because I was able to get the .5 book free and really enjoyed it and so I looked at the first book in the series and it was very cheap so I got it.
I like the way the author has taken characters from so many different walks of life and made it work . I’m really looking forward to getting to know them.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone. It’s a clean,funny and even knowledgeable.
I can’t wait for the next one and I already have it.

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