Rating: WARTY!
Read hick-ily by Cassandra Morris, this is a children's novel which at first irked me somewhat, but which then began to grow on me, before really irking me so I quit listening to it (it was an audio book). The irking part was the 'southern bumpkin' accent of the reader. I don't know if she really speaks like that, or if she just adopted the voice for this novel, but it wasn't an easy voice to warm to because it sounded so annoyingly vacant. The text of the novel was what kept me listening for a while. Initially, I liked the way it was written and the kid's philosophy despite it being first person PoV, but the kid was too country hayseed for my taste, and the endless rambling really ticked me off. She used phrases like, "What the hayseed is going on here?" and she used made up words such as "spin-diddly" to signify something wonderful.
If it had been just once or twice, I think I could have withstood it, but when it's every chapter, it's offensive, especially when the story is quite literally going nowhere. I'm not one of these people who likes to read stories about people who are quirky just because it's about people who are quirky. I need for the story to go somewhere or do something. This one didn't. The blurb lied that it was about a magical town that had lost its magic and implied that this country bumpkin would bring it back. She did absolutely nothing - not as far as I listened, which about 75%.
Her friend was 'The Beedle' who was a character who did good deeds for people anonymously. She learned who he really was, but I honestly could not tell if the reader was saying 'Beetle' or Beedle'. I decided it had to be 'Beedle' eventually, but I wasn't sure. Not that it mattered because he did nothing either.
I assume something in the way of fixin' the magic happened at some point before 'THE END', but I sure as heck isn't hell had no interest in traveling all the way through the great state of tedium to get there. It was nothing save endless rambling about day-to-day life, with a mind-numbing amount of tedious detail. I really, honestly don't need to know exactly how she dries dishes. I'd rather watch paint drying than hear that, especially when what I wanted to hear was what they were talking about while they dried the dishes. Her unremarkable experiences in school were equally uninteresting as were her trips to the ice cream parlor. Yes, this is the kind of story where they have an ice cream parlor even if they don't call it that. If you know what I mean.
I can't recommend this one. Stick a Newbery in it and move on.
