Written by Monika Bhatkhande
Reviewed by Sonali Shirodkar and Sujata Noronha
An ancient jewel brings three very different friends together, but the dangerous secrets they uncover will test the limits of who they can truly trust.
| Publishing Date: 2026 ISBN: 978-93-6336-059-4 Page Count: 248 Publisher: Talking Cub (An Imprint of Speaking Tiger Publishers) Review Posted Online: October 2026 QBR Reviews Issue: Q3 2026 Categories: Mystery | History | Adventure |  |
The Secret of the Star Sapphire by Monika Bhatkhande is a middle-grade historical mystery and interactive adventure set in modern-day Mumbai. The story, according to the publisher, is written for ages 10 and above.
The story begins with thirteen-year-old Neel Bapat and his friends, Nahid and Anosh, who stumble onto a secret clue left behind by thieves during a sudden library power cut. This accidental find pulls the three kids into a fast, dangerous treasure hunt across the city to locate the ancient, rare Star of India Sapphire by decoding poems, unearthing old papers, and exploring hidden tunnels. Along the way, it blends different cultures smoothly and naturally. It shows a character with a disability. The inclusion of a character’s disability can sometimes feel unnecessary or forced if it does not directly impact the plot, meaning the core time-travel mechanics and mystery would have worked perfectly without it.
Furthermore, the table of contents and detailed maps at the start turn the reading experience into an interactive map adventure, helping young readers physically track the friends’ journey across historical landmarks.
Monika Bhatkhande is a children’s author, quiz master, and artist who crafts interactive mysteries for middle grade readers.
A reading circle with young readers revealed that the book builds immense curiosity, though its cover design and texture create distinct expectations before the story even begins. A explained that the title built curiosity to read the book. When looking at the cover page, Z praised the Contents, pointing out that the chapter titles were incredibly unique, attention-grabbing, and comfortably short, making the book highly inviting to read.
The dialogue mixes strange styles, where Neel uses professor-level words, but Anosh suddenly uses modern slang like “That’s so sus, bro.” This prevents them from sounding like real children during scary scenes, which was quite unbelievable for young readers. The author writes more like a researcher, utilizing advanced historical terms and complex vocabulary. M and Z explicitly pointed out that it was very hard to read some words, specifically highlighting the difficult pronunciation of names in the history sections and complex terms like the specific disease mentioned in the text.
The narrative voice reads more like an academic report than a thrilling children’s adventure story. The language feels cold, describing a child slipping into a dark tunnel by focusing on the scientific rock type instead of the kid’s racing heartbeat. This academic heavy-handedness even led one child who arrived late to mistake the book for a work of non-fiction. The book treats India’s past like wallpaper rather than exploring real history. The text drops historical names like Ravana’s Lanka, Alexander the Great, and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. However, these eras are only used as flashy decorations for a simple treasure hunt. The book never explains the real political or cultural depth of these figures, using them only as quick trivia clues.
In the text, mythology is treated as real history because the story connects a physical object, the Star of India Sapphire, to both ancient myths and real historical figures.
By showing that the same gemstone was held by Ravana in Lanka, and later by real people like Nikola Tesla and Rudyard Kipling, the author blends the two worlds together. Because the characters in the book find real, physical clues left behind from Ravana’s era, the ancient myth naturally becomes a factual part of the historical timeline they must investigate.
While the book aims to capture the city, it isolates its focus to exclusive spaces, leaving out the local. The city is more than the Asiatic Society Library and we wished for more.
The book misses out on the real feel of Mumbai by only describing what buildings look like, completely ignoring everyday sounds like traffic, the street atmosphere, the vibrancy of movement and such.
The book’s structure and style have deep problems that hurt the story and slow down the middle of the book. Many chapters follow the exact same predictable pattern and formulaic checklist. It always moves to a text-heavy riddle, shifts the children to a new place, and ends with the exact same cliffhanger of a shadow watching them.
The story keeps repeating the same events or ideas over and over, which makes it feel slow and boring. Because nothing new is happening, the plot loses its excitement and stops moving forward. The pacing is uneven because the book spends over sixty pages inside the Asiatic Society Library, but wraps up the whole centuries-old mystery in less than ten pages. The story spends so much time describing rich, fancy places that the actual mystery gets lost. The plot follows a very strict formula (Find a clue → Solve a riddle → Travel to a new spot), which can feel repetitive by the middle chapters. The initial riddles repeat historical facts the reader was already told, killing the puzzle’s excitement.
The exciting chase scenes constantly stop for long, boring history lectures. The story cuts away too quickly; during a fast chase through a crowded alley, the action suddenly stops for three pages to lecture the reader about the architecture of old fountains. The children who read the book agreed that while the book is overall very interesting, they explicitly noted that the history parts are simply too long. When reading paragraph by paragraph, A and Z wanted an interesting plot packed with exciting adventures and more clues to solve.
The book tries to balance two different timelines: modern-day Mumbai and colonial 1871 Bombay, but the execution is poorly distributed. The 1871 historical plotline involving a six-year-old Rudyard Kipling is abruptly dropped after just a few short chapters, leaving major subplots completely unfinished. Young readers agreed that mixing the past and present timelines adds interest to the text, but three children pointed out that the current execution is highly confusing. They suggested it would be much better if the timelines were systematically aligned rather than mixing dates back and forth.
The characters feel highly unrealistic, and their interpersonal relationships lack the natural friction expected in a middle-grade mystery. In the beginning, the three friends feel completely identical because the book dumps too much information about them (telling) instead of showing their individual personalities. Even though they come from different cultures, these backgrounds never actually affect how they think or act, making the book’s diversity feel like an empty label rather than real life. Furthermore, their friendships are perfectly sweet all the time with no real fights or problems. However, the kids solve difficult, ancient puzzles way too fast, which takes away the excitement. There is no real danger because the bad guys feel like silly cartoon characters, and all the adults are pushed to the background or act completely clueless just to make the kids look independent.
The plot relies on extreme logical stretches that undermine the realism of the mystery. The story relies on a massive stretch of imagination by having three normal children outsmart professional criminals on page one. During a sudden blackout at the library, thirteen-year-old Neel does not panic or seek safety. Instead, he and his friends flawlessly track adult burglars through a dark building and accidentally foil a major heist, making their bravery feel highly forced and unrealistic from the very beginning. The central lore surrounding the Star of India Sapphire completely contradicts itself. The narrative repeatedly claims that the sapphire brings unparalleled wealth and success to anyone who owns it. Yet, the historical timeline in the book shows that every single empire or king that held the stone ended up facing brutal wars, betrayals, and complete ruin, making the gemstone’s legend logically messy. The children find old paper diaries in perfect condition inside damp, flooded tunnels, which makes no physical sense.
The internal illustrations frequently conflict with the narrative logic and break story continuity. The large two-page illustrations fail to show the fast speed of the chase scenes. Instead of showing the kids running from danger, the artwork shows them standing completely still, which ruins the excitement. There are also blatant mistakes between the words and the drawings.
Ultimately, the word “Secret” in the title is highly misleading because the book never delivers a mind-blowing revelation. The plot treats the “secret” of The Secret of the Star Sapphire simply as a basic tracking game. Because the big mystery wraps up way too quickly, it leaves the story with a rushed and flat ending. The moment the children physically locate the stone, the book abruptly ends, leaving all the deeper historical questions and mythological mysteries completely unanswered. We feel this book is best left off our library shelf.
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- The Adventures of Kohinoor by William Dalrymple, Anita Anand, and Devika Cariapa, Juggernaut Books, 2020
- The Mystery of the Secret Hair Oil Formula by Asha Nehemiah, Scholastic India, 2005
- Zen by Shabnam Minwalla, Duckbill Books (Penguin Random House India), 2023