Book Review - Greenglass House (spoilers included)

Greenglass House - by Kate Milford

Published 2014

Read aloud to the 9yo 

The Good

A positive family story that shows interracial adoption!  Woohoo!  That isn't always easy to find, actually.  Also a book that explores the imagination and being who you want to be in the context of a 'Dungeons and Dragons'  type role-playing game the children play in the story.  I read a review likening the book to a youth version of an Agatha Christie novel and yes!  Very much so.

Milo, the main character, also struggles with what seems to be an anxiety-type disorder and yet he works to push himself and he shows healthy coping mechanisms.

The Bad

There are some instances of people smoking, saying "Oh my G-d", "shut up", 'stupid', 'idiot', and that sort of thing.  It is generally easy to edit these on the fly.  Milo is fairly petulant at the beginning but pulls it together for his family.  The chapters are veeeeery long, and often don't split up into easy sections so it's pretty hard to read for a bedtime read aloud unless you are prepared to invest some serious time each evening, which sometimes I am, and sometimes I am not.  Milo is older than my children so there is also some behavior that I don't deal with yet (like a feeling of being 'owed' a winter vacation from school) that might be more in line with an older child.  One of the characters, Meddy, asks impertinent questions about Milo's adoption.  Milo also wonders about his birth family and feels bad for doing so because he loves his parents.  Smuggling is recognized as illegal but is portrayed in a neutral to positive light.  There is a story told of a smuggler who is captured and executed.  There is mention of ghosts and other spooky things.  Toward the end of the story there is a 'bad guy' type figure who holds people hostage with a gun, although no one is hurt.

The big surprise comes in one of the last chapters and I did not see it coming.  I won't tell you what it is but I will say it has to do with a ghost.

My Thoughts

This book was a read aloud for my 9yo, who honestly was mostly interested in the mystery, the maps, the art, the clues.  For that, it was great.  If you have a child who is sensitive to ghost stories or suspense, this book would probably not be such a great choice.  

I had two problems with the story, and one is explained away simply by remembering this is a story for relatively young readers - Milo and Meddy were consistently, fantastically successful at coming up with answers.  You were 100% guaranteed that if they went to 'look for some clues in the attic' that they would find big ole' pieces of the puzzle.  If they interviewed someone, they acquired important, substantial clues to solving the mystery.  Etc. Etc.  Ad nauseum.  Now, did the 9yo notice that or care about it if he did?  Certainly not!  He probably would have been more frustrated and annoyed by a mystery that dragged on!  But as an adult reading it, it's worth mentioning that in terms of a mystery - this is very juvenile.  The equivalent of, say, those old Nancy Drew mysteries.

The second problem had to do with the ending.  I had read several other reviews about the book and there were multiple people unhappy with the ending so I'm not alone here when I say...it was lame.  And a little ridiculous.  And also not really an ENDING ending.  Again, the 9yo thought it was fine, this was the adult's opinion here.  I'm going to try and tiptoe around so I don't completely spoil it for you, although fair warning - the title of this blog post does say 'Spoilers Included'.  Essentially the problem is that a huge supernatural event happens...and no one seems at all bothered by any of it.  It was like if suddenly you wandered into a little coffee shop and there was, say, the entire cast and crew of your favourite tv show sitting there in full costume eating cake and you just shrugged and thought "huh.  Weird."  And walked away.  That's how much sense the ending had.  It wasn't logical.

But if you can look beyond the ending, and the fact that this is a middle school level mystery with a LOT of confusing elements and comprehension levels, this is actually a fun, interesting, worth while read for the 9-12 set.