TBR Friday: The League of Beastly Dreadfuls…

It’s TBR Friday once again and I’m happy to say I’ve knocked over another reasonably substantial tome in the last fortnight in my progress toward Pike’s Peak in the Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2017.  The League of Beastly Dreadfuls by Holly Grant was another that I had marked down at the beginning of the year as one I particularly wanted to get through in this challenge, so it’s a relief to have finished it.

Ten Second Synopsis:

Anastasia’s world is turned upside down when her parents are unexpectedly killed in a freak vacuum-cleaning accident and she is whisked away to live with her strange and not altogether friendly Great Aunts in a sprawling house that used to be St Agony’s Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Once there, Anastasia is plagued by the sense that something is not right – could it be the lunatic boy gardener, the proliferation of portraiture featuring monobrowed ladies, or simply the poor cooking that could be to blame?

Time on the TBR Shelf:

Since January, 2015.

Acquired:

From the Book Depository as a pre-order.

Reason I haven’t read it yet:

It is one of a cluster of middle grade books on my TBR that are of a similar theme and because I have multiple of these to choose from, I end up choosing none at all.  Hence the fact that they are all still on my TBR shelf.

Best Bits:

• The book has a humorous, light-hearted tone, which makes it very easy to flick through.  I quite enjoyed the style of humour at the start of the story and even dog-eared a page that had the main character saying, “Curse you, Winkles!” after tripping over a garden gnome (named Winkles) because I thought that the phrase was one I could certainly slip into my everyday speech patterns.
• The story is easy to follow and the mystery isn’t too complex, so this is a good choice for when you are looking for a fun read that won’t make you work too hard.
• Without spoiling the plot at all, I really enjoyed the originality of certain talents displayed by certain young male characters that ally themselves with Anastasia.  It’s so rewarding to discover “magical” style talents and folk that aren’t common in other literature for this age group.

Less Impressive Bits:

• After initially enjoying the banterish, tangent-seeking style of humour in the story, by about halfway through I felt that it slowed the pace a little.
• The resolution to Anastasia’s problems seemed a bit too wacky and convenient to me and appeared to be setting up for the second book in the series rather than solely concluding this one.   Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I won’t be chasing up the second as the narrative style grated on me after a while and I wanted the plot to move a bit quicker.

On reflection, was this worth buying?

I have absolutely no idea why I decided I had to have this so badly that I put it on pre-order.  I would have been just as happy borrowing it from the library I suspect.

Where to now for this tome?

To be sold at Suitcase Rummage.

So that’s eleven books down out of my hoped-for total of twelve for the year, and since we’re only at early June, I could well extend my goal to the second level of Mt. Blanc (24 books).  I think I’ll leave it as is at the moment though and see how I go.  The second half of the year is always busy with new releases and my review schedule for the next few months looks pretty packed as it is.  Anyway, if you’d like to check out my progress toward any of my reading challenges for 2017, you can do that here.

Until next time,

Bruce