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A review by imzadirose
Joshua and the Magical Forest by Christopher D. Morgan
3.0
I received this book from the author for my honest review.
Forestium is the story of a boy on a journey to find his father who he was told was killed but he believes alive because of a series of dreams. The boy, Joshua, sets off on his journey and finds old and new friends along the way. He learns he must find 3 orbs to open the Portallas to find his father, but doing so with require a sacrifice.
The Good:
The story was cute. It moved along VERY quickly with short choppy chapters. It seems like the book is much shorter because it's such a quick and easy read.
The quest to find his father, the finding of the orbs and what the orbs are/do are interesting and keep you engaged while reading.
The Not so Good:
The characters were flat and uninteresting. I didn't really care about any of them, perhaps because it was such a short book. If there was more character development than maybe I would have. However:
The characters did NOT read as 16-17ish. I had to keep telling myself he was 17. The book doesn't read like YA. It reads more like MG and if not told the character's age I would have guessed 10-11, 13 at the MOST.
Which made the "insta-love" super creepy. Even at 17, them professing their undying love was pretty creepy. I'm not a fan of insta-love anyways, so in this book it did NOT fit and I would have liked the book a LOT better without it.
Overall it was a good, but not great, book. Had it been classified a MG book and without the "romance" it may have been a 5 star book for me. But the flat characters and insta-love took it down a few notches for me. I couldn't see them as 16-17ish so all the romance was icky to me. The journey and the quest itself was great, the romance wasn't needed.
Forestium is the story of a boy on a journey to find his father who he was told was killed but he believes alive because of a series of dreams. The boy, Joshua, sets off on his journey and finds old and new friends along the way. He learns he must find 3 orbs to open the Portallas to find his father, but doing so with require a sacrifice.
The Good:
The story was cute. It moved along VERY quickly with short choppy chapters. It seems like the book is much shorter because it's such a quick and easy read.
The quest to find his father, the finding of the orbs and what the orbs are/do are interesting and keep you engaged while reading.
The Not so Good:
The characters were flat and uninteresting. I didn't really care about any of them, perhaps because it was such a short book. If there was more character development than maybe I would have. However:
The characters did NOT read as 16-17ish. I had to keep telling myself he was 17. The book doesn't read like YA. It reads more like MG and if not told the character's age I would have guessed 10-11, 13 at the MOST.
Which made the "insta-love" super creepy. Even at 17, them professing their undying love was pretty creepy. I'm not a fan of insta-love anyways, so in this book it did NOT fit and I would have liked the book a LOT better without it.
Overall it was a good, but not great, book. Had it been classified a MG book and without the "romance" it may have been a 5 star book for me. But the flat characters and insta-love took it down a few notches for me. I couldn't see them as 16-17ish so all the romance was icky to me. The journey and the quest itself was great, the romance wasn't needed.