DNF at 10%

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was very similar to The Chronicles of Narnia, and even had it's very own Susan and Lucy (though the two are not related in this book). Blue Window is about a group of children (siblings) that fall into another world via a window. This new place is scary, unexpected, and filled with... I don't know what, because I didn't get that far.

I know I didn't read much of this book, but I had a lot of trouble separating the different characters. I also kept getting confused and had to re-read certain parts to figure out what was going on. One minute they're at the kitchen table eating breakfast (there were a few things going on), and someone mentions going to school. The next sentence everyone is already home from school and doing various activities.

Where are their parents?? They're mentioned a few times, and the mom shows up with orange juice once, but then just disappears. I feel like there should have been more interaction with the children, since the oldest is only 13. It wasn't just the parents that vanished in the middle of a paragraph. The other characters seemed to flutter around without a purpose, too.

I really loved the synopsis for this one, but I just could not get into it. The random additions from an exile, or the exiles, were odd and didn't seem to fit with everything else. I'm sure that perspective would have tied in later, but I was already confused without trying to decipher their cryptic words.

The flow of the story was weird, the way the information was presented was confusing, and I didn't connect with any of the characters. I did like Susan's fondness for words, but their application to the story seemed forced. I might look for this book once it's published, because maybe these kinks were ironed out after I received this review copy. It just had such a promising, interesting concept. I'm still a little curious about where they landed, and what's going to happen to them, but not enough to read it as it is.


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Literary Merit: Poor
Characterization: Weak
Recommend: No
Level: Middle Grade
A weird mix of asking a lot of young readers, but not being good enough to earn such efforts. The books was way too long and had too many shifting character perspectives and was set in a fantasy world without a specific enough premise that I could understand it. Yet the writing style was for lower level readers and didn’t give vivid or compelling descriptions to help readers stick with the long plot. I don’t see any of my middle schoolers reading this book, and no high schooler would put up with the writing style or young characters ( )

The beginning of this book reminded me of the Narnia books. I could not follow or get into this book at all. It was extremely long with about 100 chapters. ( )

I have tried to read this book three times and I can not get into it. I really liked the idea of the book but is was going so slow that it could not keep my interest and will read almost anything. I think if this book was edited down to a 300 page book to fix the pacing issues it would be a much better book. ( )

I actually enjoyed a lot of this book, and I thought that the premise was very interesting! It felt a bit like a mix between Narnia and Oz, with a darker twist.

I did feel like the book was something that I'd read before, but nevertheless it was a fun read. I did have a little trouble with the characters in the beginning, since there were so many, and honestly I feel like that was unnecessary.

I do feel like this would be a good bedtime read though! ( )