This book has sat on my shelf for YEARS, so I was excited to finally be able to read it. I ended up thinking it was only okay, and I don’t think that I will be continuing the rest of the series. But the book did set things up for a great story!
Kendra and Seth have no idea what they are getting into when their parents drop them off at their grandparents’ house. They have never met these grandparents, and their dad rarely talks about them. Once they get to this mansion, their grandfather tries to set rules about not going into certain parts of the property. But their curiosity gets the best of them, and they decide to go exploring. Soon, a whole new world opens up to them, as they find out their grandfather’s true job, and learn about the magical creatures that live with them on the land of this mansion.
The one thing that upset me the most in this book was how annoying Seth was. Not annoying in the bickering with his sister, I think these two actually bickered less than Amy and Dan in the 39 clues. And I absolutely loved that series. But annoying as in ALWAYS doing exactly what he wasn’t supposed to be doing. Grandpa says stay out of the woods, he goes into the woods. Grandpa says to be careful around the magical creatures and that you have to be trained for a long time to be a fairy dealer, he goes and tries to catch one on his own. Grandpa says don’t open the window and stay in bed, he does the EXACT opposite. Most of the problems that occur on the sanctuary are HIS fault. He does some things that he can’t take back.
Kendra wasn’t a bad character to me, but she wasn’t amazing either. She was just….generic to me. I remembered Seth’s name when I went to write this review (because he made me so mad) but I had to look up her name in the Goodreads synopsis. I am sure that they will grow and change in the future books of this series, but for now, she just feels boring.
The thing that absolutely SAVED this book for me was the entire world that this book was set in. I loved the idea of there being sanctuaries for magical creatures all over the world, and humans acting as guardians to make sure that these other beings didn’t go extinct. There were so many beautiful magical creatures, and I wanted to know about all of them. Especially the water nymphs and the fairies. But there is definitely darkness in this world that was explored slightly, and I would love to have gotten the chance to read more of the series to explore that. But I’m not sure if I like the human characters enough to keep reading about them, so I might have to leave this world to itself.
I wouldn’t recommend this book, but I also wouldn’t turn people away from this book because the world is so beautiful. I will just leave it for now, and maybe I will come back to this series sometime in the future.
Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5 books.
