Lori

I watched the film many times before reading this book and I wish I had read this earlier. I found the book to be better story wise compared to the film although the films visuals fit the story so well.

The book is not quite magical despite having magic in it. It felt more cozy and whimsical. The author made multiple storylines, each interesting on their own, and brilliantly combined them near the end. I often found myself smiling at how cute or funny the story is. I loved the main character. She went from someone passive to someone more commanding. She does make some mistakes along the way to becoming a stronger person but it’s nice to see a female character be more assertive.

This would be a great book for any kid to read. I enjoyed this so much.

This would be a good book for kids as it’s simple to read and the morals of the story are brought up or thought about by the main character after each event. For an adult, the writing is not that great but for a kid or young adult its themes are shown and then told for reinforcement.

I don’t have much to say, it’s a good and simple story that’s effective at getting across its ideas.

After reading Speaker for the Dead, I thought this book would be just as captivating. It was not. It just went on for too long and over analyzed everything. I just kept waiting for the point in the book where it would take me in. The story was pulled in so many different directions that each part wasn’t given the attention it deserved. Interesting ethical debates are still apart of this book but it not enough.

Characters I had cared about before, I didn’t fee that same connection with. The emotional pull of the previous book was missing from this one. Most were unlikable and I don’t feel like that was intentional. Bad characters with no emotional gravity are what hurt the book.

This book was such an inferior instalment in this series. We lose so much of the wit and chemistry of the other books.  

The female lead is different from when she was in the other books in the series. I expected a stronger more female-empowered romance. What we got was a childish and bossy female lead and a terrible father male lead who just wants someone else to deal with his children. Both characters get better as the book goes on but not by enough.  

It’s hard to get past how terrible the male lead is. His complete neglect of the children is not endearing and throughout the book, he only seems to want a wife to handle them. Don’t bother with this book. 

This was an AI recommendation for a reading challenge. It sounded great but it was such a let down for me.

The start was great. It was atmospheric to a government science experiment being unleashed on an unsuspecting group of people. The detail was great and really put you in the mood for the horror that is to come. Then that’s it. The rest of the book was draining to read. The atmosphere was quickly striped away for long and mostly unnecessary backgrounds of each character.

I was looking forward to a book that would really scare me but instead of frights we get gore. I will say that the author does an excellent job at describing gore. Sadly, though most of the gory scenes felt cheap and forced. They weren’t needed and the characters had to make some stupid decisions to receive these outcomes.

Once you find out that the “monster” is tape worms and all you must do is not touch them the fear factor is lost. The very first gore scene involves the only adult on the island making the stupidest decision in a horror book with absolutely no reasoning. There isn’t even a paranormal side of the story to draw the characters into making these decisions.

Through out the rest of the book you are handed gore with no substance to appease us for the lack of horror the book was supposed to contain. The turtle scene was the worst. I get killing the turtle but the way it was done and the amount of time spent on it was terrible.

This author could have done better, and I truly can’t understand the choices made for this book. There were moments especially at the beginning where I genuinely thought that this would be a horror story. I would recommend not reading this.