Winterhouse is just the sort of fantasy mystery adventure story that I like. The setting is a luxurious hotel with lots of long, twisty halls and secret, locked rooms and exciting amenities, including, of course, a huge library full of old books. The plot is filled with coded messages and puzzles and late night adventures and unusual friendships. The protagonist is an orphan girl, Elizabeth Sommers, who loves to read, so lots of literary allusions. The cast of supporting characters includes the hotel proprietor, the mysterious Norbridge Falls, a friendly librarian named Leona Springer, Elizabeth’s new friend, Freddy Knox, and various other assorted villains, friends, and eccentric minor cast members.

In the story, the poor orphan girl, who lives with her unkind and neglectful aunt Purdy and Uncle Burlap, is unexpectedly whisked away by unknown benefactors to Winterhouse Hotel for the Christmas holidays. While Elizabeth is enjoying the hotel and all its charms—the library, ski slopes, an over-sized jigsaw puzzle, concerts, lectures, and more—she becomes aware that there is mystery and even danger lurking behind the happy facade of Winterhouse. With the reluctant help of the unadventurous but inventive Freddy, Elizabeth sets out to uncover the secrets of Winterhouse before those secrets overcome the goodness and cheer of the old hotel and its guests.

Yes, it’s a perfect set-up. But the execution wasn’t quite up to par. The dialogue and the actions of the main characters, Elizabeth and Freddy, were strained and sometimes unnatural. Norbridge Falls’s actions and particularly his speech patterns are mysterious and unpredictable, too, and I never understood why he was acting so secretive, eccentric, and strange. The author left a lot of loose ends and unanswered questions hanging, perhaps in view of a possible sequel to this debut novel, but it felt like a violation of the Chekov’s gun adage: “if in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act.” Why were the two jigsaw puzzlers, Mr. Wellington and Mr. Rajput (and their wives), included in the story? What was the significance of introducing them and their huge Himalayan temple puzzle into the plot? Who is Riley Sweth Granger, and where did The Book come from? What really happened to Elizabeth’s parents? Why are Freddy’s allegedly distant and hateful parents suddenly interested in spending time with him at Winterhouse? What is the significance of the Flurschen candy? Why do most of the women of the Falls family live to be exactly 100 years old?

Although some mysteries are resolved by the end of the book, these and many other questions that I had are left unanswered. I think the author may eventually hit his stride and give us some delightful middle grade fiction in the vein of The Westing Game and The Mysterious Benedict Society, but Winterhouse does read like a first attempt. It’s worth reading, though, if only for the allusions to Anne-with-an-e and Narnia and Westing Game and other similar classics. And the library. The library in Winterhouse is to swoon for!

Oh, and the illustrations in the book by Chloe Bristol are pitch-perfect, or pen-perfect. Enjoy the pictures and the puzzles and the bookishness. I’d say give it a chance, and perhaps look forward to the next book in a projected trilogy, The Secrets of Winterhouse, to be published in 2019. Perhaps I’ll get answers to some of my questions then.

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This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

Willa is a young night-spirit jaetter of the Dead Hollow clan of the Faeran, an orphan and a sort of New world fairy? She’s also a woodwitch with the ability to talk to trees and plants and some animals, and she can change skin color like a chameleon and blend so that she can hardly be seen among the flora of the forest. Jaetters are thieves who come at night and steal from the day-folk for the benefit of the ruler of Willa’s clan, the paderan. Faeran believe in the guideline that “there is no I, only we”, but Willa is an individual. She escapes from the confines of her dictatorial clan life, but she finds that life without the clan is lonely and purposeless. So, most of the book is about Willa’s search for home, community, and family.

Who’s editing the books these days, anyway? Willa of the Wood tells a good story, set in the Great Smoky Mountains, with atmosphere and suspense and compelling characters and a touch of Americana (Cherokee characters, the mountains, panthers and otters and other animals native to the area). BUT there are some obvious glitches that a good editor should have noticed. The first paragraph of chapter 33 repeats the action in the last few paragraphs of chapter 32, as if the reader is picking up on a serial installment of the story. Why? None of the other chapters have this repetition (that I noticed), and it was disconcerting.

Then, there were niggling little questions I had as I was reading. The miller, Nathaniel, says he earns his living from the mill, taking one bag of cornmeal for every ten that he grinds, but no one ever comes to the mill to have their grain milled. And most of the time Nathaniel is absent from home, anyway. How can he run a business when he’s gone half the time and has no customers? And how many children were there in the underground prison? It seemed as if there were lots, more than Willa could visit or free, on multiple levels. Then, the story said that she freed only 23 or 24 children. What happened to the rest of the children? And why did the Faeran let the girl stay with her baby brother?

There were more questions I had as I read. Some were resolved; others were not. I can see how this fantasy fiction would appeal especially to children who live in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee or South Carolina. Or those who like stories about communication with animals. The entire book is rather dark and melancholy, with themes of cultural annihilation, cruelty, power-grabbing, and greed. But, as I said, it may appeal to some readers. I thought it was OK, but I was kind of glad for the happy-ish ending. If it’s the first in a series, there wasn’t enough there to draw me back for a second go-round.

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This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

We all have such different senses of humor. What to me is just silly may be laugh out loud funny to you. What is witty and fun for me may be boring to another person. So, when I say that humor in Wizardmatch just didn’t tickle my funny bone, that’s not to say that it won’t poke yours or that it shouldn’t. A chocolate pudding swimming pool, a boy whose magical talent is burping out birds, a wizard grandfather who is a spoiled brat—these just weren’t very humorous to me. But you—or your kids– may find them to be hilarious.

“Mortimer de Pomporromp—the oldest, most powerful, most celebrated wizard in his entire family—had the sniffles.”

Now, that’s a promising first line. I liked the name, Mortimer de Pomporromp. I liked that Mortimer’s granddaughter Lennie, the actual protagonist of the book, was half-Filipina. I liked Mortimer’s sensible assistant, Estella. I liked the persnickety cat, Fluffles aka Sir Fluffington the Fourth. I liked the eventual emphasis on forgiveness and family unity and teamwork.

I didn’t care for the constant sparring and fighting that went on between all of the characters in the book. I just didn’t like any of them very much. I didn’t like the snot/barf/gross motif that wove its way throughout the story either, although I realize that repetitive emphasis on bodily functions wasn’t written in for my benefit. Authors think middle graders in particular love that kind of stuff, and they write down to them, IMHO.

Then, there were some things in the book that just didn’t make sense. Lennie thinks her grandfather may be favoring her brother Michael over her partly because she’s a girl but also because she’s part Filipina. However, Poppop Pomporromp does favor Michael, who’s also half Filipino. When the villain of the story is trapped in a supposedly inescapable sticky trap, it turns out that it is escapable after all. And all of the adults in the story are horrendously bad at being mature adults; they’re more childishly competitive and bickering than the children. (Maybe that’s not so unrealistic as I wish it were.)

Final word: I didn’t care for it. You may like it better than I did. It depends on your sense of humor.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

George, the Third Lord of Devonshire and the unluckiest boy in London, has a number of problems. Everyone who comes near him seems to die or at least suffer some sort of tragedy. He’s an orphan with no family left. He has sold almost everything he owns, but he’s about to lose his home anyway. His last heirloom, a map that’s supposed to reveal the hiding place of a treasure called the Star of Victory, is stolen. And his only friend and caretaker, his manservant Frobisher, has disappeared, presumably kidnapped.

Then, George meets Ada Byron, his neighbor across the street, and life gets even more interesting—and dangerous. Ada introduces George to Oscar, whose father is a long-absent pirate, and to Ruthie, the orangutan who is Oscar’s friend, and the four of them set out to find the map, the Star of Victory, and Frobisher. Will George’s notoriously bad luck jinx the entire quest? Is Ada really able to fly—and land—her own self-invented flying machine? Are Oscar and Ruthie a help or a hindrance in the mission to find the Star of Victory? Where and what is the Star of Victory, and can it help them rescue Frobisher? And is Ada like her estranged father Lord Byron, “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”?

At the end of this rather extravagantly nonsensical story, the author quotes Ada Byron Lovelace herself, who was a real person, really the inventive and talented daughter of Lord Byron, the poet. From a letter to Ada Byron’s mother:

“P.S. I put as much nonsense as I possibly can in my letter to you because I think it compensates you for the grave dry subjects of your letters, but I suspect the truth is it gives me pleasure to write nonsense.”

I suspect it gave Ms. Morgen much pleasure to write this fantastical adventure story, and it gave me some pleasure to read it. I did have trouble following the logic of the story, but that may be due to the lack of logic in some parts. The children, as children and adults are wont to do, often make assumptions and jump to conclusions that are unwarranted. If you are looking for a Poirot-type logical and sensible mystery story, this adventure isn’t it. But it is a romp. And the characterization is lovely:

George, the 3rd Lord of Devonshire, is a Puddleglum, pessimistic, superstitious, wary of Ada’s flights of fancy, and untrusting (with reason). But he works himself up to bravery in spite of his fears, and he begins to believe in impossible adventures by the end of the book.

Ada Byron is the Pied Piper, luring George into adventure, danger, and belief in the impossible. She is inventive, intelligent, and confident, everything that George isn’t and doesn’t believe he can possibly become. In the author’s note, Ms. Morgen tells us that twelve year old Ada Byron really did dream of building a flying machine, but it never quite got off the ground.

Oscar is bit less well-developed as a character, but he does add “character” to the ensemble, especially when he talks to Ruthie the orangutan using semaphore sign language.

Anyway, for the enjoyment of this particular fantasy, you will need to suspend disbelief and judgment and maybe logic and just go with the flow. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.