Book Review - Winterhouse

 

Winterhouse was well-received in middle-school book circles, so when the current 9yo and 7yo suggested it as a read aloud, I said yes.  Here's what we thought!

The Good:

This is a very imaginative and interesting story with a lot of unique points to it.  You can tell that the author has researched his genre well, and is very familiar with other modern novels in the same age group - I'm thinking of Book Scavenger, Mr. Lemoncello's Library, etc.  The characters are fairly straightforward and don't necessarily grow during the story, but are good illustrations of their types.  I appreciated that between the two younger characters, the emotional roles were reversed from traditional tropes; the girl was bossy, difficult and authoritative while the boy was biddable, quiet and reserved.  The plot was intriguing and we honestly were not sure what would happen next, despite numerous clues and hints given, and there were lots of little rabbit trails that wound off into the distance, and that sort of thing appeals to us immensely.

The Bad:

I am usually pretty permissive about fantasy elements in fiction when it comes to children's books.  Magical creatures, witches and goblins and elves, make believe and pretend is all generally fine.  Which is good, especially if you're reading this level of book - because a lot of fiction for children involves elements of fantasy.

But where I start to feel uncomfortable is when the fantasy becomes dark, and it isn't always clear that it's still 'pretending '.  I felt this way, if you recall, reading The Boundless.  The line between fact and fiction was faintly drawn at points, and so when the story turned dark, it was harder to separate the truth easily in a child's mind.

And here we have the main issue with Winterhouse.  It wasn't dark in a deliciously creepy but child friendly way,  not was it 'traditional fairy tale dark', where evil is acknowledged to exist,  but is ultimately overcome by good.  This was just...weirdly dark for a kids' novel.  There's a coffin shaped box holding the half dead body of a dark arts practitioner that's carried around by her daughter in the hope of restoring the soul to the body.  The children are chased through the woods by that same disembodied soul, dark arts symbols are etched on a bridge, etc. etc.

Like so many modern books advertised for the 8-12yo set, the actual storyline is fine for the age group, while the content is probably too old.