The Willoughbys
Ratings11
Average rating3.5
This is horrible! Absolutely ghastly!
But I keep reading it with delight blended with horror and giggle every now and then...
And it ends very well :-)
Definitely worth reading :-)
Tim was a total dickface in the beginning of the book, and I almost tossed the book because of it. But I was reading the book not for the story but for the German practice, so I kept reading and things got much better. Overall it's an odd but fine book.
Some weeks ago I bought four books to read to the kids. This is the second of them. It's a lot shorter than the previous one, we read the whole thing over a span of nine evenings. It's pretty cute and has a nice sense of humor running throughout. It also does some shout-outs to some classics of young adult literature. When it mentioned The Secret Garden, for example, my two kids immediately understood the reference as we'd that one about a month and a half ago. This story is about four kids (of the title) whose parents are awful people who want to get rid of them. It's a bit short on conflict and the story resolves itself very neatly albeit fairly quickly. But what it lacks in plotting it makes up for in sly humor. It wasn't as rabidly received as The Mysterious Benedict Society, but the kids gave this story glowing reviews.
Strange.... Having decided they don't really like each other, the Willoughby adults and children proceed to try to get rid of each other, without actually committing murder. Throw in a nice nurse who wasn't supposed to be, a baby who isn't cute without curls, and an odd assortment of minor characters and you end up with a rather strange tale that is nonetheless fascinating.
This one was a delight. Sorry I didn't read it sooner - and will probably put it in the read again pile. It's a kids book, but once it gets rolling, it's got plenty of sly adult humor.