A review by booksandteaanddogsohmy
The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop
3.0
This was a family read-aloud book choice. The plot was solid, and the story kept my son's interest over time. I appreciate the author's excellent use of descriptive language. She does plot and scene well enough, so there's that. Why only 3 stars?
My son found the main character, William, to be extremely unlikeable and unsympathetic, which added to the time it took us to slog through this one. It took us darn near half a year to finish this book!
Even when the action was in high gear and we wanted to find out what happened next, there was only so much William we could stomach.
None of the other characters were developed enough to make them interesting, either (though none were quite so deeply unlikeable as poor William.) We found the Apple Tree Man, the Dragon, and Brian the guard to be the most interesting characters, though they each played a minor role in the story. Even William's "growth" towards the end of the book felt surface-level.
The final chapter felt like Winthrop herself was over the book and just wanted to wrap things up quickly. As long as it took us to finish this thing... man, I felt like she owed us a little more OOMPH.
Still, it was a fun book. Needless to say, we won't be reading the sequel next.
My son found the main character, William, to be extremely unlikeable and unsympathetic, which added to the time it took us to slog through this one. It took us darn near half a year to finish this book!
Even when the action was in high gear and we wanted to find out what happened next, there was only so much William we could stomach.
None of the other characters were developed enough to make them interesting, either (though none were quite so deeply unlikeable as poor William.) We found the Apple Tree Man, the Dragon, and Brian the guard to be the most interesting characters, though they each played a minor role in the story. Even William's "growth" towards the end of the book felt surface-level.
The final chapter felt like Winthrop herself was over the book and just wanted to wrap things up quickly. As long as it took us to finish this thing... man, I felt like she owed us a little more OOMPH.
Still, it was a fun book. Needless to say, we won't be reading the sequel next.