The Gold Diggers Club

Kristin Butcher writes novels for young adults. Her most recent works
are Cairo Kelly and the Mann, The Gamma War, and The Tomorrow Tunnel.

Karen Rivers has achieved a noteworthy feat with The Gold Diggers Club,
in as much as the entire story hangs on nothing more crucial than the
completion of a school assignment. Even so, the reader is captivated
from beginning to end. This is due primarily to the style in which the
book—a sequel to Waiting to Dive (2000)—is written. Told in first
person by Carly Fitzgerald, the novel’s central character, the story
focuses on the thoughts coursing through young Carly’s mind.

And a very busy mind it is. Not only is Carly preoccupied with her
peers’ opinions and her budding interest in boys, but she is also
concerned with her mother’s pregnancy and the mood swings that
accompany it, as well as the unborn baby and the changes its arrival
will bring about. In addition, she is exploring her relationship

with her new step-dad and trying to deal with the discovery that she is
afraid of heights, a fact which may prove an obstacle to her passion for
diving.

The least of her concerns is the Brother XII school project she and her
three friends have undertaken. More interested in the gold the cult
leader is purported to have hidden than with the project itself, Carly
aimlessly follows her friends’ lead, letting her mind wander where it
will. And because Carly’s unabashed honesty is both amusing and
refreshing, readers happily go along with her. Young readers will
relate; older ones will remember. Recommended.