This is a super summer series starter. It hit all the sweet spots in our reading household. We got it via inter-library loan from my local library, which it is no longer offering (not during COVID), so it may be a while before I get the sequels to read.
Twelve-year-old Gordy Stitser shares his family's well-known secret -- that potions make the world go 'round and his mom is a member of the prestigious BREW and can brew a mean potion -- with his best friends, Max and Adilene. Max just can't wait to meet the mummy in the basement lab, Bawdry, although Gordy is thoroughly tired of having to douse him daily with air freshener.
Then Gordy's mom leaves for a "convention," (she's actually a sort of potion-abuser law enforcement officer) and a strange package from his Aunt Priss shows up at the house, warning to get ready for "war." Gordy can't control his curiosity; he opens it, even though he knows he probably shouldn't, and inside is a mysterious vial swishing with a mysterious cream-colored potion, or maybe a raw ingredient. He doesn't know, because it isn't labeled.
Two people, Esmeralda and Yeltzin, show up at his house asking probing questions. They give his Dad a business card and his dad starts acting all weird and answering their questions and allowing them inside the house and trashing the place, looking for something, when that's totally not at all the way he'd normally act.
And then, because his best friend Max is over and in the super-non-secret lab with him, and Gordy's not paying attention, he pours the whole contents of the vial into a cauldron where it burns up!
And Gordy is so in trouble, but he has no idea how much in trouble he actually is, or with whom.
His first clue comes when Bawdry attacks him and Max in the lab, and a revivified skeleton -- Doll -- protects them.
I won't spoil what comes next, but it's a fun series starter, if a bit older.
Enjoy!
