This is a grand adventure novel for kids. I really mean it -- GRRRRAAAAAAAAND! (Please read that exclamation in your best Scottish accent.)

I love Hammy Bean -- a blind boy who dreams of spotting the Loch Ness Monster in his Scottish hometown. I love Ada Ru -- and her bright personality and penchant for all the orange possibilities that the world has to offer while she vacations in Scotland over the summer. And add in one more friend, operative nickname Strings -- an American, like Ada Ru. A bonny trio!

Nessie Quest is a fun read. Definitely recommend for tweens (and up).

Ada Ru finally thought her parents were going to agree to a Fitzhugh family vacation in Disney World the summer before sixth grade, until her father announces he's taking a teaching position in Scotland, and moving the family there for the entire summer.

Many kids will be able to relate to Ada Ru; both in her nice behavior and in her not-so-nice behavior. There were some parts of this that made me question what was meant by the comments, but she's a kid. We don't always know. Hammy was one of my favorite characters and I think kids will enjoy this character. I loved this book because it was written about Nessie, and I don't have anything like it in my classroom.

I received an advance copy. All thoughts are my own.

Aliens and cryptids are, invariably, a metaphor for social or personal issues. They represent a character's isolation. This book deviates from the standard by lowering the stakes. Ada doesn't really have a lot of concern here. She's spending a summer away from home. The isolation is Hammy Bean's. Ada's involvement in the plot is entirely through Hammy Bean. She isn't even directly involved in the biggest dramatic scene. This means that the reader is somewhat emotionally isolated from the plot. It's a nice exploration of friendship and how we interact with each other but not an especially deep one.

I have tried and tried and cannot get through this book. I generally enjoy middle grades books, but just can't make myself finish this one.

This was a bit of a rough read for me. The main character, Ru is extremely frustrating. It was just too much complaining, and I wasn't interested in reading it. Hamish, however, was the redeeming character for me, pulling this book up to a three.star. We meet him once Ru gets to Scotland and he is a wonderful little character.

Overall, I struggled too much with this book to say I liked it, but the second half of the story was much better than the first half.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC.

Cute story about a young lady that is ready for summer vacation. Hopes to be going to Disneyland. She is quite upset that they are going to Scotland for the whole summer.
Upset still upon arrival, but meets some interesting people who she becomes friends. She learns of the Loch Ness monster.
Cute names and interactions between characters. Will read it to class

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the friendships, the adventure, and the emotions it evoked. It seemed pretty realistic to me, although I know nothing of Scottish slang and idioms so i can't verify the accuracy of these. I found the dad's nicknames for Ada Ru a bit annoying but not enough to take stars away for it. I would hand this to patrons who like character-driven middle grade novels, who like a bit of potential magic mixed in.

Scotland is the last place Ada Ru wants to spend her summer, but finds more adventure than she imagined when she meets Hammy Bean, Nessie enthusiast, and Dax, aloof musician, among other unique individuals in town. Together, the trio are determined to come out on top in the great Nessie Race. Once again, Savage finds a way to create a book that's heartwarming, hilarious, and emotional all in one go. Her novels on cryptids are more than just a mystery, and this is truly a treasure.

E ARC from Netgalley

Ada Ru is NOT happy when her parents tell her she isn't able to stay at home with her best friend in Denver during summer break, and it's not because they are going to Disney World. Instead, the father is teaching a photography class in Scotland, and Ada and her mother are going along so they can visit the father's family, Uncle Clive, Aunt Isla, and annoying cousin Briony. The university housing is in a creepy old building with an even creepier caretaker, Euna Begbie. Since the town where they are living is small and located on a loch where Nessie has been spotted in the past, it's at least a little bit interesting to wander around. She manages to meet Hamish Bean Tibby, Hammy Bean to his friends, who works with his grandmother giving boat tours of the loch to tourists. He's also home schooled by Ms. Begbie because he is blind. She also meets Dax, another American spending the summer in Scotland. Dax is cute and angsty, and carries his guitar everywhere with him. The three team up to help Hammy with the Nessie Race and also in publishing his Nessie Juggernaut, which his a bit outdated, so they also work on creating a podcast with the same information. Ada gets to meet lots of locals while interviewing various residents about their Nessie experiments, and comes to think that Scotland is not too bad. There is some friend drama with Dax (involving Briony) and Hammy (involving secrets about his parents), as well as some suspense when Hammy makes some bad decisions when upping the level of his investigations. In the end, however, devotion to cryptozoology wins the day, and Ada is sad to be leaving her summer location.

Strengths: Scotland! This is a much less stressful vacation to that locale than Schwab's City of Ghosts, and who doesn't want to spend a summer lakeside? The inclusion of a sight impaired character and explanations about how he does certain tasks was interesting. The possible romance with Dax is fun, and the drama with Briony on point. The local restaurants are the real star for some of this for me, but younger readers will love the freedom to wander that the characters have. I don't have a lot of students interested in cryptids, but there are usually a few, so this is a good title for the long haul.
Weaknesses: I'm never fond of children who don't want to go to fantastic places, so Ada really irritate me during the beginning of the book. There's also a bit more dialect than I enjoy reading.
What I really think: While I enjoyed this one, I fear it won't be a big circulator. I will probably purchase, justifying this as a title readers might pick up after reading Martin's fantastic Hoax for Hire.

While the search for the loch ness monster is an alluring one, this story is about much more than that. Hammy Bean and Ada Ru form a gorgeous friendship because of their love of loch ness. A friendship that conquers the difficulties in life and surpasses the normal. Love, friendship and food. What else could you want?
#Netgalley

Nessie Quest by author Melissa Savage is a fun and easy book for young readers! Awesome characters with great flow, we definitely recommend this book!

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an arc copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I’ll start by saying that despite my huge disappointment with this book, I want to stress that it did have one important and exceptionally well-rendered element: The character of Hammy Bean and how he and the other characters navigate the issue of his blindness. I know this is a personal issue for the author relating to her own mother’s blindness and I thought she handled the topic well here.

Unfortunately, that’s where the positives end. The basic plot is fine. Nothing overwhelmingly good but also not problematic. The writing and the characters, however...yikes and double yikes.

My biggest takeaway from this book was that it was almost unreadably obnoxious, particularly in the dialogue and to a lesser extent, in the narrator’s inner monologue. The author clearly thinks she is something of a comedian. She does land a few, but the majority of the time she misses badly and because the attempts to be cute and humorous are near constant, it becomes stunningly irritating rather quickly.

Our main character clearly means well and seems like a nice girl, but the way she’s written doesn’t make her very likable. Her fear of water, hatred of vegetables, and insecurity about her friendships were no doubt intended to make her seem relatable, but she mostly came off as whiny and lame.

Interesting semi-autobiographical casting by the author in the mother’s role. Unfortunately, it’s a problematic portrayal as well. As the child of a therapist myself, I picture my own mother cringing with disgust at the psychobabble portrayal of the Feelings Journal and the grossly patronizing way this woman talks to her daughter. And the father’s constant spouting off of unfunny nicknames was so grating that it almost made me put the book down for that reason alone.

All the credit in the world for the successful incorporation of a blind character into a complex narrative role, but otherwise, this is a dud with cringe-worthy dialogue.

This is a tough one to review, because Ru is such a brat at the beginning of the book that I almost coulnd't read it.

Here her parents were going to take her to Scotland for the Summer, and all she wanted to do was go to Disneyland. And then proceeded to bitch about it for at least the first third of the book.

But, on the other hand, we have the character of Hamish, the Ron of Ru's Harriet Potter (as she envisions her version of what is happening while she is in Scotland). He is smart, he is funny, and he is searching for Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster. Oh, and he is also blind.

When asked if he has seen the monster, before Ru realizes he is blind, he says that no, he hasn't, but he has heard her.

Once we get Hamish in the story, it takes off. And that might be because Melissa Savage says, in her back pages, that she was basing him a little bit on her mother, who went blind when Melissa was young.

So, if you can get past Ru, and get to Hamish, you will probably enjoy this good middle grade story.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this one, but I just couldn't do it. The MC is irritatingly precocious and I quickly found myself wishing the story was focused on any other character but her. There were also uncomfortable elements related to an ongoing plot with a local blind boy whose disability and family history often feel like learning opportunities for the MC rather than elements of his own history and identity. This situation may have been addressed and resolved within the text, I must admit I eventually gave on this one and did not complete it.