Tinker was conceived in vitro and born to a surrogate mother over a decade after her father's death. At a New York fertility clinic a childless couple stole some of the "twin" embryos a decade later and raised Jillian and Louise as their own. The two genius mini-Tinkers have been fascinated with Elves, and learning they are not their parents natural children, naturally embark on finding who they are related to. We find out how dangerous that is in a cascade of alternately hilarious and heartbreaking and always wild adventures. ( )

I'm a fan of Wen Spencer, and I enjoyed her other books -- but I think a lot of this book doesn't make much sense without the context of the other books, and as much fun as it is to get to know the backstory with the twins, it's not a new story. It's more of a retelling from a different perspective, and I just wanted something different out of it. ( )

The fourth Elfhome book tells the story of nine-year-old fraternal twins Louise and Jillian Mayer. They are geniuses who attend a school for the gifted in New York City as scholarship students. Their parents are an event planner and a technician at a fertility bank. They are also film makers who have written and produced a series of films that are parodies of Elfhome.

Just before their ninth birthday, after an explosion that destroyed their playhouse/film studio, they discover that their parents are not genetically their parents. This immediately sends them on a quest to discover who their biological parents were. They learn that their parents were astronaut Esme Shenske and their father was Leonardo Dufae. They learn that they have an older sister named Alexander on Elfhome and four younger siblings still in the fertility bank.

When they learn that their four younger siblings are slated for disposal, they become determined to rescue them.

Their plans to rescue their siblings lead to lots of computer hacking, learning that their ancestors were elves, a secret chest taken from Elfhome hundreds of years earlier by one of their ancestors, a museum break-in, learning more about their birth mother who left cryptic clues which are showing up in Louise's dreams, and an evil plot.

They find that they have more allies and friends than they could have imagined. Because along with the quest to rescue their siblings, they are still sort of normal fifth graders who are working on their class play - Peter Pan - and making new friends from among their classmates. It is from those friends that they learn that they are famous because of their videos and even have a stash of money online that the videos have produced. But their greatest ally is a baby dragon that they name Joy whom they rescued from the secret elvish chest.

The story was long and filled with lots of different events. I liked the way Louise and Jillian interacted. I liked their different personalities and different ways of dealing with the many difficult situations they face in the story. I liked that Louise, who had always felt like the lesser twin in looks and personality, finds her strengths during the story and becomes the hero.

This story happens concurrently with the previous Elfhome books and readers who know them will also know what is happening outside the scope of this story but which have great impact on it. There are a couple of overlapping characters but they have small roles here.

Tanya Eby did an excellent job narrating the story and did a good job showing two brilliant young girls who were still only nine years old. Their brilliance made it something of a shock when they ran up against something they couldn't do because of their age - like traveling alone, renting hotel rooms, buying healthy food and regular clothing, signing contracts, opening bank accounts. Their genius did allow them to find their way around most of the problems though.

I recommend it to fans of urban fantasy and especially those who have read the other Elfhome books. ( )

While I love the series, this was probably my least favorite of the series as it has almost nothing to do with Tinker. Can't wait for book 5 to come out so I can finally see how this series ends. ( )

This is a great installment in the Elfhome series. It took me a while at the beginning to place when the action was going on and who the players were (not the twins, but everyone else), but once it got going I really enjoyed it. ( )