Jurassic Park meets Once There Was in this page-turning middle grade fantasy adventure set at a nature preserve for magical beasts, where two girls find themselves on a wilderness expedition gone disastrously wrong.

Hattie Swift is a maid-in-training at Majestica, a resort and nature preserve where visitors come face-to-face with rare magical flora and fauna. She’s thrilled to be invited along on the park’s famous wilderness train excursion for the first time, but there’s a catch: she has to accompany Evelyn Ridgewell, the hotel owner’s haughty niece, who wants nothing to do with her.

Soon after embarking, Evelyn overhears a man who aims to hunt the park’s creatures for sport, and Hattie meets Jacob Threadborne, an apprentice magician sent by a foreign government on a top-secret mission. Then the magical fences keeping guests safe stop working, and the train breaks down in the most treacherous part of the jungle. Faced with poachers, man-eating trees, and a dragon on the loose, Hattie, Evelyn, and Jacob must stick together to figure out what’s gone wrong at Majestica . . . that is, if they want to make it out alive.

Features a richly illustrated map of the expansive nature preserve, as well as a bestiary with all the magical—and dangerous—creatures at Majestica.

Hattie is an orphan who has grown up at the Majestica Hotel. Evelyn is the niece of the hotel’s owner. Neither girl is pleased when Hattie is assigned as Evelyn’s maid for the tourist expedition to tour the park that surrounds the hotel - a park filled with magical beasts from different places. But when the trip gets derailed, literally, when the train crashes leaving all the tourists stranded in the wilderness. Hattie and Evelyn have to join forces to save the animals from poachers and the park from total destruction.

While aimed at younger readers this is a delightful adventure story for readers of all ages. There are dragons and other marvelous creatures, danger - but not too frightening for younger readers - personal growth and the discovery of real friendship. While this is a great, self-contained story I, for one, would not be unhappy to see Hattie and Evelyn in another adventure. Highly recommended. ~~ Stephanie L Bannon