ARC, Books

Book 99: The Land of Decoration – Grace McCleen

Yesterday I wrote about reading my first Advance Reader’s Copy of a novel and promised the review and here it is. As mentioned yesterday, this is an advance copy provided by the publisher and I did not receive compensation to review this novel. The views and opinions in this post are my own.

It’s hard to know where to begin, thus yesterday’s post, but I’ll just delve right in. As with most of the novels I read I’ve only selected a few things to focus on for this post.

Overall, I thought the novel was interesting and well written. Judith, raised by her religious father, is a 10-year old living in England and is facing what she believes (and her religion often believes at various intervals) is the end times. Told from Judith’s point of view the story did have some issues occasionally, but this worked well for most of the novel. Her language, and even her emotional reactions/descriptions, often times switched into what I felt was an older child. Although described as quick and advanced for her age and not having habits like most children, I can see why Judith’s voice would come across older, but sometimes it was just too much of a stretch (and not like she was mimicking adults, but almost like her voice was lost in the writer’s voice).

Click here to continue reading.