This Book Is Not Good for You (2009)

This Book Is Not Good for You is a book by anonymous author Pseudonymous Bosch. It is part of the "Secret Series", a pentalogy of books written by Bosch, and is the sequel to The Name of This Book is Secret and If You're Reading This, It's Too Late. In the story, a famous chef named Señor Hugo captures Cass's mother in order to get Cass to bring him the legendary Tuning Fork for the Midnight Sun (the society whose goal is to find the Secret and be able to live forever), in hope that it will help the members achieve immortality.

Plot

The novel starts out with an African girl named Simone, who tastes a piece of chocolate for the Midnight Sun (as the book centers around the sense of taste, like the first novel, which centers around scent, and the second, which centers around the sense of sound). It is noted that she is a Supertaster, and is able to distinguish between almost any food, no matter how similar they are. Immediately after tasting the chocolate, she blacks out.

Meanwhile, Max-Ernest, Yo-Yoji and Cass, three members of the Terces Society and the three protagonists of the series, are searching for the box in which the letter was found when she was a baby, as she earlier found out she was adopted and wants to find out more about who she is. While they search, they find a box filled with magazines that was dropped off at the front door of Cass's grandfathers' old, abandoned fire station, where the grandfathers live. Max-Ernest points out a magazine with a picture of the Skelton Sisters on the cover, the teen pop stars who were known by the two collaborators as being members of the Midnight Sun. Knowing this, the kids become suspicious of what they are doing, and discover that they are with Ms. Mauvais, the French woman who is one of the most evil leaders of the Midnight Sun, and that they have established headquarters in the country Côte d'Ivoire in Africa, where they take care of orphans and work on a chocolate plantation. Cass and Max-Ernest head to the old circus, where the Terces Society (which consists of Pietro Bergamo, the retired magician whose brother, Luciano, otherwise known as Dr. L, was captured by Ms. Mauvais and is now one of the leaders of the Midnight Sun; Mr. Wallace, an accountant who works as the society's archivist; Lily Wei, a Chinese violinist who escaped the Midnight Sun and is now the head of physical defense and martial arts, and Owen, an actor who appears as many different people in the series and acts as somewhat like a spy for the society) to tell Pietro and the others where the Midnight Sun is hiding. Mr. Wallace tells them that he thinks the legendary Tuning Fork is involved in the spa's plan with chocolate.

Later, Cass and her mother, Melanie, or "Mel" for short, sign up for a cooking class run by the famous blind chef, Señor Hugo. After bringing up the subject of the Tuning Fork, Cass is invited to Hugo's famous restaurant with her mother, Max-Ernest, and other friend, Yoji, or "Yo-Yoji." At the restaurant, the kids and Mel discover that it is extremely dark to the point where no one can see anything, since Hugo wants the diners' other senses, especially taste, to be heightened during their meal. After trying many different foods, Cass sees that her mother is gone. Outside, she reads the note given to her by the waiter from Señor Hugo, which demands the Tuning Fork in return for her mother.

Later at the fire station, Cass and her friends search for the Tuning Fork, as they were told earlier by Mr. Wallace that by now the Fork, which was originally possessed by the Aztec boy "Caca Boy", would probably have ended up in a junk shop, and assumed that the junk shop he was talking about could only be Cass's grandfather's home. While searching, Cass finds the box in which she was dropped off by Mr. Wallace, and then sees on a television that the kids' principal, Mrs. Johnson, is in possession of the Tuning Fork. The trio heads to her house to her house to find out that she is completely opposite of what she says in school, and is gambling, smoking and not recycling. They blackmail her into giving them the Fork. Cass then gives Señor Hugo the Fork at her house, finding out that he is in fact part of the Midnight Sun, and will not give her back her mother as she told her friends what he had done, when she had been told not to.

Meanwhile, the girl, Simone, awakes from her faint and finds a woman named Melanie in her cell. Mel gives her comfort and tells her that she has a daughter like her, and gives Simone comfort, telling her that her parents must have loved her and thought it best to send her to the plantation. Mel is then called to the Tasting Room, and Simone warns her not to eat any chocolate.

At Yo-Yoji's house, Cass, Max-Ernest, and Yo-Yoji investigate the pictures of the Midnight Sun at the plantation in the magazine, looking for clues. They discover that they are at a zoo, since there was a "don't feed" sign and an American bird and are in fact not in Africa, but are located inside an artificial rainforest park somewhere in the United States (as the series is meant to be secret, the author states that he cannot identify the exact place in the country in which the park is located). After taking a train to the park, the kids camp out there (with the trio nearly eaten by a lion) and later journey through the rainforest, locating the plantation with the help of a Capuchin monkey.