Two star review, originally posted here on June 21, 2018.
** spoiler alert ** Well, this was a misfire on my part. I was hoping to grab an enticing yet fun summer read (like a Grisham novel), but didn’t feel like using up too much time or brainpower, so when this kids’ version of Grisham popped up on sale I was like “Sure, why not? Should be fun!”
I definitely appreciate the IDEA behind this book. It’s cute. It’s fun. Etc. As an adult reader I kinda wanna roll my eyes at this kid, but he’s a kids’ book protagonist so whatevs, he’s fine.
I think I mostly just got really really bored with the story. Maybe in the hopes of dumbing it down for child readers Grisham just sucked out all the excitement? It felt like he didn’t want to put in anything more to complicate things, but he had some pages to fill, so he just had absolutely nothing happen for a while. He solves his problem halfway through the book by just going to an adult (which is great! It’s one of my main complaints when I try to slog through Harry Potter books!), but then we just kinda sit around for a while as that adult goes “I dunno… I guess we go to some other adults?” and then after a while those adults all go “Ok I guess we should go to this other adult?” and then that adult finally does an anticlimactic thing that could have easily happened 100 pages earlier.
If I were so inclined, I might give the second book a try out of fairness. The pilot is never good, right? And this is the first book that introduces characters, does world building, etc. Maybe now that the series has settled into its groove it will really start moving. I don’t think I’m inclined to dig much deeper, though.
Helga without the H 