A review by danilanglie
Brackenbeast by Kate Alice Marshall
3.0
Super cute, as always. This is a loyalty read since I know the author's sibling and now I buy all her books. I also like the opportunity to check in on the state of middle-grade fiction sometimes, since I don't have any kiddos in my life who are at this reading level, and I find what kids these days might be reading to be an interesting topic!
I love the spooky vibes, and the simple moral lessons here. This is a book that deals with trauma and anger, and also has a very clever conceit in its worldbuilding as to why the adults in these children's lives cannot help them in their dangerous quests. Often you have kids with dead parents for just this reason, so they can go on adventures without anyone there to notice what they're up to. This is a clever twist on that premise that I quite enjoy.
The atmospheric elements, the scary monsters, the chilling adversaries, are all the kinds of things that I bet would genuinely have frightened twelve-year-old me! Hell, there's a moment when Eleanor sees a creepy man tapping on the glass from the inside of a portrait and that might just end up haunting twenty-eight-year-old me just as well!
I love the spooky vibes, and the simple moral lessons here. This is a book that deals with trauma and anger, and also has a very clever conceit in its worldbuilding as to why the adults in these children's lives cannot help them in their dangerous quests. Often you have kids with dead parents for just this reason, so they can go on adventures without anyone there to notice what they're up to. This is a clever twist on that premise that I quite enjoy.
The atmospheric elements, the scary monsters, the chilling adversaries, are all the kinds of things that I bet would genuinely have frightened twelve-year-old me! Hell, there's a moment when Eleanor sees a creepy man tapping on the glass from the inside of a portrait and that might just end up haunting twenty-eight-year-old me just as well!