I got this book as part of the Lauren Oliver audiobook sale on Audible. I was excited to read a middle grade series by Oliver; the synopsis sounded interesting and I thought this would be something I would love. In the end it was okay but not great. The story is fairly predictable and very boring at times.
I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was decent. The narrator does a good job with character voices. However, this wasn't one I thought was great on audiobook...actually I was pretty ambivalent about it in general.
This is a pretty classic "Clue" type of story. Someone is killed in Dumfrey's Dime Museum and a group of unusual children try to unravel the mystery of who killed them and why. Initially the increasing number of deaths is blamed on a curse from a shrunken head that's stolen from the museum. However the story ends up much more convoluted than that.
Our group of extraordinary pre-teens follow the clues through a number of mis-directions to unravel this increasingly deadly mystery. The end game though is fairly predictable given the foreshadowing throughout the book.
For some reason I had trouble engaging with the story. All the characters seemed a bit stereotypical. Additionally the story seemed more like a laying out of facts than an interesting story or mystery. I just didn't think it was all that interesting or all that well done.
Overall this was an okay middle grade "who done it" type of mystery. There are a couple interesting twists right at the end of the story but for the most part the story is incredibly predictable and boring. I wouldn't recommend. There are a lot of wonderful middle grade reads out there and this isn't one of them.
I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was decent. The narrator does a good job with character voices. However, this wasn't one I thought was great on audiobook...actually I was pretty ambivalent about it in general.
This is a pretty classic "Clue" type of story. Someone is killed in Dumfrey's Dime Museum and a group of unusual children try to unravel the mystery of who killed them and why. Initially the increasing number of deaths is blamed on a curse from a shrunken head that's stolen from the museum. However the story ends up much more convoluted than that.
Our group of extraordinary pre-teens follow the clues through a number of mis-directions to unravel this increasingly deadly mystery. The end game though is fairly predictable given the foreshadowing throughout the book.
For some reason I had trouble engaging with the story. All the characters seemed a bit stereotypical. Additionally the story seemed more like a laying out of facts than an interesting story or mystery. I just didn't think it was all that interesting or all that well done.
Overall this was an okay middle grade "who done it" type of mystery. There are a couple interesting twists right at the end of the story but for the most part the story is incredibly predictable and boring. I wouldn't recommend. There are a lot of wonderful middle grade reads out there and this isn't one of them.
