Review: City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab

Publication Date: August 28th 2018
Publisher: Scholastic
Pages: 285 pages

Cassidy Blake's parents are The Inspectres, a (somewhat inept) ghost-hunting team. But Cass herself can REALLY see ghosts. In fact, her best friend, Jacob, just happens to be one.
When The Inspectres head to ultra-haunted Edinburgh, Scotland, for their new TV show, Cass—and Jacob—come along. In Scotland, Cass is surrounded by ghosts, not all of them friendly. Then she meets Lara, a girl who can also see the dead. But Lara tells Cassidy that as an In-betweener, their job is to send ghosts permanently beyond the Veil. Cass isn't sure about her new mission, but she does know the sinister Red Raven haunting the city doesn't belong in her world. Cassidy's powers will draw her into an epic fight that stretches through the worlds of the living and the dead, in order to save herself. 

I was really excited about this book, in part because I adore Edinburgh and I was fascinated to see how Schwab portrayed one of my favourite cities, and in part to see what a middle grade novel from Schwab would look like, having read her young adult and adult offerings.

The answer? A little bit mixed. It's a brilliant concept, and I think younger readers will enjoy this spooky tale a lot more as the intended audience, but something felt like it was missing for me.
Perhaps it's just been a while since I read a middle grade book, but Cassidy is a really passive protagonist, she just allows things to happen to her and doesn't show a huge amount of interest in anything, which I found really baffling given what an exciting (also scary) situation she has found herself in.
She shows no interest in her powers, in what's really going on or actually finding answers (apart from a couple of brief moments in the story) and just is buffeted from one scene to the next.

With so little input from Cassidy is hard to really engage fully with the story, which was disappointing, but otherwise it's a perfectly good little tale. It's got just the right amount of scare factor, it shows parts of a really gorgeous city that you don't often see in younger fiction, and it looks like it could be the start of a nice series. However I don't think it's got quite enough to push me to pick up the next book when it's released.

Review: A Curious Tale of the In-Between by Lauren DeStefano

Publication Date: September 1^st 2015
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books
Length: 240 pages

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

Pram Bellamy is special—she can talk to ghosts. She doesn’t have too many friends amongst the living, but that’s all right. She has her books, she has her aunts, and she has her best friend, the ghostly Felix.
Then Pram meets Clarence, a boy from school who has also lost a parent and is looking for answers. Together they arrive at the door of the mysterious Lady Savant, who promises to help. But this spiritualist knows the true nature of Pram’s power, and what she has planned is more terrifying than any ghost.

Lauren DeStefano’s writing is incredible. She writes brilliant, stunningly beautiful, unique stories and her writing just gets better and better with each published novel. So I knew that regardless of the age range this book was being pitched towards, I was going to love it. And I was right.

A Curious Tale of the In-Between is like nothing you will ever have read before, or indeed anything you will ever read again. The prose is haunting and lyrical, filled with unexpected pieces of beauty and my copy is littered with highlighted quotes that I fell in love with.

“She knew that the dead hid pieces of themselves in the world. They buried organs in the living. They stuffed memories into trees and clouds and other innocuous things.”

It tackles difficult subjects, most pre-dominantly that of death with a deft and gentle hand. The story is at times creepy and downright terrifying, but it is pitched just right for middle grade readers. It offers a piece of solace for anyone who has suffered a loss, and offers a window for younger readers to talk about it and see it depicted in fiction. It is a unique book in that regard, and one that handles the subject extraordinarily well. It’s particularly poignant after reading the authors note about how this book came about.

I devoured this book in one go, falling in love with Pram and her little space in the world. The writing is, as I’ve said, stunning. 

“To lose one’s mother was to lose the beginning of one’s life story.”

The characters are fascinating and vividly drawn. I found myself being moved by this books in ways I wasn’t expecting, drawn in by the quiet and melancholy moments, the terrifying elements and the heart-warming relationships. It is an unexpected book, but utterly beautiful, and anyone who has ever suffered a loss (or indeed loves great writing) should pick this up. Do not be fooled by the middle grade age tag, this is a gem of a book that anyone will love.

Review: Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty

Publication Date: July 14^th 2015
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Length: 304 pages

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Disney Hyperion for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

"Never go into the deep parts of the forest, for there are many dangers there and they will ensnare your soul."
Serafina has never had a reason to disobey her pa and venture beyond the grounds of Biltmore Estate. There's plenty to explore in the shadowed corridors of her vast home, but she must take care to never be seen. None of the rich folk upstairs know that Serafina exists; she and her pa, the estate's maintenance man, have secretly lived in the basement for as long as Serafina can remember.
But when children at the estate start disappearing, only Serafina knows who the culprit is: a terrifying man in a black cloak who stalks Biltmore's corridors at night. Following her own harrowing escape, Serafina risks everything by joining forces with Braeden Vanderbilt, the young nephew of Biltmore's owners. Braeden and Serafina must uncover the Man in the Black Cloak's true identity before all of the children vanish one by one.
Serafina's hunt leads her into the very forest that she has been taught to fear. There she discovers a forgotten legacy of magic that is bound to her own identity. In order to save the children of Biltmore, Serafina must seek the answers that will unlock the puzzle of her past.

Serafina and the Black Cloak has a gorgeous cover, an intriguing premise and a lot of hype surrounding it already, so it’s been on my to read list for a while and I was thrilled to be offered a chance to read it early by Disney Hyperion.

There were a lot of things I loved about this book, but unfortunately there were quite a few that really didn’t work for me too. I loved Serafina, she’s a refreshing and engaging heroine, full of determination and courage and oddities that only serve to make her more intriguing. I loved watching the story play out and her discover her history, her family and herself.

I also loved seeing her relationship with Braedan develop. I know that it was in part because it’s a book aimed at younger readers that there was no romance, but it was really lovely to see an honest friendship develop between the two rather than any romantic undertones. I particularly loved them exploring Biltmore together and trying to gather clues to work out the mystery.

The magic elements were really well used. I loved Serafina’s emerging backstory, just as I was chilled by any scenes involving the Black Cloak. It was genuinely terrifying, and I shouldn’t have been reading this one at night! The introduction of the Black Cloak was a particularly frightening scene to read, and it really sets the tone of perilous terror against Serafina’s plucky determination and light. The magic is brilliantly different, horrifying and well used so that the story comes together cleverly and neatly by the end, offering a fun ride with a satisfying conclusion.

The things that didn’t work out so well were (as always) the lack of period appropriate language. It would be all fine for a while and then suddenly Serafina and co would be using modern language and slang and it’s just so frustrating when a book has been deliberately set in a specific time period and the language used then doesn’t match up. You could argue that it’s aimed at a middle grade readership, but then that doesn’t match up with some of the very adult language being used in places. I was actually really surprised at the level of language – in some places suitable for a twelve year old heroine and a middle grade reader, and then in others it would suddenly switch to a much more adult lexicon and it didn’t quite work with such a young protagonist.

I also found it frustrating how easy it was to spot who the culprit was. Maybe I’ve just read too many mystery books and I need to take a break for a while, because the culprit always seems blindingly obvious to me. There were some good attempts to throw the reader off with various shady characters, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to distract me.

The pacing was also rather off in places. There were some really great, tense scenes where I was tearing through the story, and then it would all slow down whilst Serafina described something, or mused on the world and her place in it for five or so pages, and I would find myself wanting to skim read to get through the overly verbose descriptions.

Those things aside though it was still a good book. It was engaging, and a fresh concept that worked really well, plus it had some truly terrifying and scary moments thrown in too. I think younger readers will enjoy this one much more than older readers, although be warned that it may cause fear of the dark and nightmares!

Review: The Iron Trial by Holly Black & Cassandra Clare

Huge thanks to Netgalley for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

Most kids would do anything to pass the Iron Trial.
Not Callum Hunt. He wants to fail.
All his life, Call has been warned by his father to stay away from magic. If he succeeds at the Iron Trial and is admitted into the Magisterium, he is sure it can only mean bad things for him.
So he tries his best to do his worst - and fails at failing.
Now the Magisterium awaits him. It's a place that's both sensational and sinister, with dark ties to his past and a twisty path to his future.
The Iron Trial is just the beginning, for the biggest test is still to come…

I was very curious to see how the book would turn out, coming from two such well known and prolific authors as Clare and Black, but also because of the comparisons being made to Harry Potter.

Yes there are a lot of comparisons, but there are also a lot of differences too which helps once you get into it. There’s the school for magic, the trio of friends who band together, the sneaking around and general hijinks happening behind people’s backs, the prophecy, the Dumbledore and Snape like teacher figures, but there’s an awful lot in there that sets it apart from the Potter series. The series is always going to divide opinion, and there will always be people who can’t get into it or don’t want to read it because of the comparisons. For me personally it was like looking into a slightly skewed mirror until I got far enough into the story that it stopped being quite so obvious.

It was a bit unsettling though because I did always have Potter in the back of my head. And whilst every effort was being made to make magic school cool and exciting, I couldn’t get beyond some aspects of it. It was underground and cold and dark and no one ever really saw the outside world and the food, no matter how delicious it was described to be, sounded weird… I missed Hogwarts.
And if it hadn’t been so similar in so many ways, that comparison wouldn’t have been there.

Comparisons aside, it is still a very good book. Black and Clare make a great writing team and I really enjoyed the story. There were some great twists, some wonderful characters, and some really intriguing elements. I would have liked to get to know some more of the secondary characters better, and to see more of the magic lessons. I loved the main trio and I loved how the immediate comparisons were squashed and turned upside down by the end of the book.

I’m really looking forward to the second book because it feels like the set up has been dealt with and we can now move in to broadening the world and getting to know the characters better. There’s a lot that I want to know about this world. I think that a lot of the Potter comparisons will have been dealt with and the second book will begin to peel away and show a more individual and unique world to the one we were seeing here.

It is a much younger book, aimed at middle grade readers rather than young adult, and I know that the comparisons will put off a lot of people. However I definitely recommend giving it a go. The writing is good and the lead characters are wonderful. There’s more to it once you get into the story and I think that the series has some really fantastic potential. Let’s hope it lives up to it!