• Author: Jaime Lee Mann
• Publisher: Blue Moon Publishers
• ISBN: 9780993639715

I received this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this book.  Not only have I had a spate of not so good books lately, but this book came about from the author telling her children bedtime stories.  Because of that, I thought for sure this would be a new favorite.  What Fantasy fanatic doesn’t love a good fairytale type book that originated from a child’s beloved bedtime story?!  Unfortunately, as much as I tried, I just didn’t enjoy this book at all.  In fact, I only got about halfway through before I stopped trying to come up with excuses for it and gave up.

The problem is almost immediate.  This is meant to be a middle grade book.  However, the writing is so simplistic that it makes Disney movies seem profoundly complex.  It feels like it should be for a child just beginning to read, but there are some elements of the story that I would feel uncomfortable with a child that young reading about.  A younger child would take the events of the book, or at least most of them, at face value, but there is such a lack of explanation that I think a middle grade reader would be bored or annoyed with it.

At first, I was going to recommend this as the type of book that could be read to any younger child.  However, I think that parents should read the book first and then decide on whether or not it’s appropriate.