Book Divas

A teenage girl and her parents move to Awkward Falls as her dad has changed jobs yet again.  Josephine is determined that this will be the most boring place ever and doesn’t know how she will survive until school starts.  In no time the craziness starts as she sees something outside in the fog.  She goes out in the middle of the night to take a look and ends up at her neighbor’s house.  The house is inhabited by a little boy, his robot manservant, and a talking cat…well he’s mostly a cat.

This boy, Thaddeus Hibble, is a bit crazy and off kilter having survived off of candy for years and been living in this house without parents or adult supervision.  Now there is a cannibal on the loose, the same one that killed Thaddeus’s scientist grandfather.  The cannibal, Fetid Stenchley shows up and all heck breaks loose…heck including various animal/machine creations that were let loose from the lab below Thaddeus’s house.

This story was fun and certainly different.  It felt a bit like The Island of Dr. Moreau for kids.  The younger crowd will love the crazy story of Thaddeus and the life he’s been living filled with candy-fueled nights, a robot that will do anything for him, and a fast talking cat that he reanimated with parts of other animals.

The cannibal might be a little bit scary for the very young, as well as the monsters created from bits and pieces of animals melded together.  The plot of the story flows quickly along and there is plenty of action to keep reluctant readers entertained throughout.  While most of the story is well wrapped up, I would have expected a bit happier of an ending and some closure with some of the scary parts of the book.