The Splendid Secrets of 66 Lilly Pilly Lane - Elena Paige - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Elena Paige

GENRE: Middle-grade Fantasy.

PUBLICATION DATE: September 19, 2019.

RATING: 3.25 stars.

I was quite excited when I was opting for this book as the title, the story and the Goodreads rating were all quite appealing. My feelings about the book were quite contradictory to the general opinion on Goodreads and hence I asked my 12 year old daughter (an advanced reader) to give her opinion on the book. Thus this feedback has two distinct parts.

My daughter's opinion:

She enjoyed the book to a great extent. She found the visuals of the book quite awesome such as the description of 66 Lilly Pilly and its magical inside. She also admired the fact that the author didn't resort to stereotypes while describing the magical creatures. The fairies, the elf, the goblin: none fitted the typical mould of these characters. What most resonated with her was the lesson that other than being selfish or selfless, there was a third possibility: self-care. She was disappointed at the ending as it abruptly hints at the next book. Overall, she liked the book enough to rate it 4 stars and wants to read the sequel.

My opinion:

While the book seemed to start as a Cinderella spin-off, it soon became clear that the author was going in a different direction from the traditional fairy tale, a welcome change. Up until the point that Chia, the protagonist, encounters 66 Lilly Pilly Lane for the first time, I was fascinated by the book and couldn't keep it aside. Sadly, it went downhill for me from there onwards.

There are definitely areas where the author needs to sharpen her writing. There are so many redundant sentences in it that after a point, my mind was just skipping through the content to locate the next important chunk of information. The book needed a much stricter editing.

One of the sentences in the book goes: "Her mind was doing its crazy thing again of thinking out of control." Might I say that this perfectly reflects the way Chia's character is written. Half of the content that has Chia in the scene includes a multitude of her assumptions and thoughts. I was really fed up of reading the same ideas again and again; it seemed like the story was just stuck in a loop. The book would have provided a much better reading experience if the author had paced its writing crisply.

That's not to say that the book has no positives. There are many humorous scenes between Jeremy the goblin and Pip the duck. I really enjoyed their interactions. The visualisation of the house and the magical characters was fabulous. The author definitely has great creative thinking skills. I loved the way she conceptualised Artemis, Robert, and Ms. Roberta.

One thing that confused me was whether the book was intended as a bedtime read-aloud by parents, because many chapters begin by repeating the idea from the last sentence of the previous chapter. Ideally, only books meant for early or young readers could be forgiven for having this writing technique. Middle graders have much better memories and don't need so much of repetitive information.

Lastly, middle grade fiction is generally defined as books for 8-12 years but some of the content in this book is very frightening for 8-10 year olds. Without revealing major spoilers, I can just say that there is child abuse, dark scenes and death.

One of the biggest mistakes made by authors of children's fiction is to treat children as if they can't understand anything without a lot of explanation. The author did have a very good intention in mind because the moral of the story, as it is repeated plenty of times in the book, is: Always put yourself first. However, this is a case of good intention, bad implementation and the moral comes off sounding like a selfish sentiment.

Overall, my rating for the book would have been 2.5 stars. As my daughter has rated it 4 stars, I'll just average it out to 3.25/5.

A special mention for the cover art. It was really nicely drawn and suited the book wonderfully.

I received an advance review copy of the book for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.