Customer Reviews

Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy [With 3 Cassettes]

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When my mother recommended the mystery Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy to me at a Scholastic Book Fair, I thought to myself, This book does not look good; mysteries are usually never interesting books. Well, I thought wrong. The wonderful mystery written by Wendelin Van Draanen turned out to be one of the best novels I have ever read. In fact, as I was reading The Hollywood Mummy, I could not put the book down, it was so well written.

What really pulled me into this book was the riveting plot that Mrs. Van Draanen thought of. She made the plot have many twists and turns inside of it, so you really never knew who the culprit was. At the same time, the plot just made you want to keep reading, and never wanting to stop. For example, Wendelin Van Draanen made the end of each chapter such a `cliff-hanger', you just read on to the next chapter without even noticing. Another example is in chapter five, when Sammy, Lady Lana, and Marissa are breaking into LeBrandi's room so that they can wake her up. They cannot find anything to unclick LeBrandi's lock, and as they are searching through drawers, they uncover a significant clue in the mystery. What happens during that situation just makes you not want to put the book down. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes mysteries and suspense. I am sure that the next books I shall read are going to be other Sammy Keyes books.

Happy Readings----
Julia

The books in this series just keep getting better. This one was so exciting! I just couldn't put it down when I got near the end. In the beginning of the book, Sammy and her best friend, Marissa hop a bus to Hollywood to try to bring Sammy's mother back. She went off to Hollywood a year ago to try to become a star. Sammy finds out that her mother, Lana, has completely changed her look, and had a fake ID made up saying she's 25 and born on Valentine's day, when really she's 35. She obviously can't have a 13 year old daughter, so she tells everyone else in her acting agency that Sammy and Marissa are her nieces. But that night, an actress that looks just like Lana, and is trying out for the same part that Lana is trying out for, is murdered. Sammy suspects her mother of killing her and tries to find a way to prove that it wasn't her mother. Also, the head of the agency, Max Mueller has asked Lana to marry him, and he's 65 years old and still worships his wife who died 25 years ago. This book is soooo exciting, and I couldn't put it down! I definetely recommend this book to all mystery lovers and fans of the series. It's a great book!

This story begins when Sammy Keyes and her best friend, Marissa set out on a Greyhound to Hollywood, where Sammy's mother is a budding starlet, on the brink of success. When they arrive at the Spanish villa where she is staying, they are suprised to find a completely new woman in her place. Her mother has completely edited her persona to a girl by the name of Dominique Windsor, ten years younger, and without a daughter. Little did Sammy know, that was the smallest of suprises. The following morning, the woman in the next room is found dead, suffocated. Sammy is soon on the case, with Marissa and the fiesty maid named Hali. Trailing through the streets of Hollywood in a battered bug, Sammy has soon begun to untangle the murky mystery- only to find that her mother is the intended victim! Can she expose the culprit and save her mother in time? Read his exciting book to find out! I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys mystery and suspense mixed with a little humor,or who has read and liked the past Sammy Keyes books.

I am a sixth grader. I have recently read this book for a book report. For the most part I like it. I like it because it has a very good mystery and twist. This makes it very unpredictable and exciting. It is also has a good ending and conclusion. The one thing I didn't like was that the book took a long time to unfold its self. Sammy Keys and the Hollywood Mummy is a murder mystery, about a girl named Sammy who visits her mother in Hollywood. Little did she know she was about to find a totally different person.

Sammy slept over night at her mothers Hollywood home. When they woke up in the morning her mother's friend, LeBrandi, was dead.

Sammy can't help but think that her mother might be the next victim or maybe the suspect.

Marissa, Sammy's best friend, came to Hollywood with her and is now going to help her solve the mystery. The first type of clue they find is an empty bottle of sleeping pills by LeBrandi's bed. They obviously expected that she took to many and tried to kill herself. The second thing that was found was a brooch. It was large gold, oval pin with a red stone in the middle. There are still many other things to be found and uncovered by Marissa and Sammy.

C.R.

Sammy Keyes thinks that her mother has lost touch with reality. Sammy's mother, Lana Keyes, leaves thirteen year old Sammy with her grandmother so that she could go to Hollywood to become a movie star. While in Hollywood, Sammy learns that her mother has changed her name, dyed her hair, told people that she has no kids, and changed her age from being 35 years old to 25 years old. She has taken on the identity of Dominique Windsor, an actress. Dominique is living and working at an acting agency owned by Max Mueller, a wealthy film director and producer. Max is 62 years old and has been a widower since his wife Claire died 25 years ago. He is in love with Dominique and is planning on asking her to marry him. Dominique looks just like Max's deceased wife, Claire. Dominique does not know that Max plans on killing her so that when the two of them are re-incarnated, they can be together forever. While Sammy and her friend Marrissa are visiting Dominique in Hollywood, Sammy gets the feeling that her mother is in danger. With Marissa's help, Sammy figures out what Max is planning to do, and she saves her mother's life. I recommend this book to mystery lovers.

One reason why I recommend this book is because it is full of mysteries. For example, LeBrandi, an actress also living at Max's acting agency, switches bedrooms with Dominique for one night so that Sammy and Marissa can sleep in the same room with Dominique. That same night, LeBrandi dies and it appears that she took an overdose of sleeping pills. Later, the police find out that Lebrandi died from suffocation. She was murdered. Who was the murderer? Was it Dominque, Inga, Max's sister, Opal, an angry actress who had just been fired by Max, or had Max killed her? Was the murderer really after LeBrandi or Dominique? LeBrandi was murdered in Dominique's bed and she was only sleeping in this room for one night.

Another reason why I recommend this book is because it had adventurous characters. Sammy and Marissa are thirteen year old girls from a small town in California. They catch a greyhound bus by themselves to Hollywood to find Dominique. Neither of them has ever been to Hollywood before, but they use their wits and get there safely. In another instance, Sammy climbs up a tall tree so that she can crawl into Max' bedroom window. While climbing the tree, the limb that Sammy is holding onto breaks and she has to jump to grab the window sill to keep from falling. Once inside Max's room, Sammy steals the key to a secret locked room in Max's house. On the way out of the room, Sammy nearly gets caught by Inga, Max's sister. She jumps into the garbage chute to keep from getting caught.

Finally, I recommend this book to other readers because it had a lot of action. When the police are at Max's house looking for evidence about LeBrandi's death, Sammy, Marissa, and Hali, make a getaway from the police. Hali drives an old Volkswagen bug and they use it get away from the police. She is a very bad driver who likes to run stop signs and red traffic lights. Sammy and Marissa think that they are going to die while riding with her. In another scene, Sammy and Marissa try to leave Dominique's room to investigate some clues about what's going on in this house. However, Max tells Inga not to let them out of their room. When Sammy and Marissa try to leave the room, Inga stabs Sammy in the stomach with a small pitchfork. Sammy is bleeding but Marissa is there to help her. While Max and Dominique are having dinner at a restaurant, Sammy figures out that this is where Max is going to kill Dominique. Sammy, Marissa, and Hali rush to get to the restaurant in Hali's Volkswagen, lead the police on a chase, and get there in time to save Dominique's life. Max dies from the poison he put in their wine.

I would recommend this mystery book to any teenager who likes to read really good mystery books. It has outstanding characters, many exciting events take place, and it makes the reader feel as though they are experiencing what the characters feel. The author does an amazing job of keeping the reader on his/ her toes. Any teenager who loves mystery books should read Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy by Wendelin Van Draanen.

W.Claiborne

I think that the Sammy Keys books are great. They are very fun to read because you never want to put the books down. Also they are sometimes scary. There are 256 pages in this book so it will take awhile. The difficulty of this book is medium. If you read this book I'm sure you will like it at least a little bit.

This is such a GREAT book, it was probably one of my favorite Sammy keyes books! In this, Sammy catches a bus to Hollywood to visit her mom-the MOVIE STAR, with her friend Marissa. When they get there, everything goes psycho! First, Marissa and Sammy masquerade as Lana's "niece" since everyone thinks that she's ten years younger than she really is, and her mother Lana looks completely different! To top it all of, she is thinking about getting married! But the guy she is "almost engaged" to has something really weird about him-and Sammy Keyes is determined to find out!

Sammy Keyes books are my FAVORITE books of all time, because I think most girls can relate to one of the characters in the book and everybody has their own Heather Acosta brat at their school. It is not a way out there mystery, it's one you can follow and become very interested in. I have read ALL the Sammy Keyes books and I want more of them! Scratch that, I NEED more of them. I want more to come out soon!

I really liked this book because it kept me intersted and determined to find out who's guilty of the crime. It also made me think about what it would be like to be Sammy Keyes a dective who doesn't live with her mom or dad but lives with her grams. There really isn't any thing I didn't like about the book. I liked it so much that its one of my favorite books.

I have read all the Sammy Keyes books (including the Psycho Kitty Queen), and this one remains my all-time favorite! Sammy and Marissa go to Hollywood to find Sammy's mom on a school holiday. They find Lady Lana, but she's not quite as they expected! She's living in a mansion with a bunch of other wannabe-stars, and the very night that Sammy and Marissa arrive, a woman dies...or is murdered? But why would someone want to kill her? That's what Sammy is out to discover before anyone else gets hurt.

This book kept me enthralled from the very beginning. The mystery and the "answer" in this book were far more interesting, exciting, and tense than any other Sammy book (and I love them all!)! It's a must-read for all mystery-lovers! It will hook you on Sammy Keyes!