Bonnie

Jinx - Sage Blackwood 'A dark and mysterious forest, a determined young hero, a quest to reclaim stolen magic...'Consider me intrigued. This sounds like another potentially fantastic middle grade read that I was super excited for. Unfortunately this one just wasn't for me but I still highly recommend for kids. (I've already given this to my kids and they seem very interested in reading it).'He didn't need his eyes to see people's feelings - feelings came through anyways, as a color or a sound or a shape. Sometimes even a taste.'I found this to be an incredibly interesting detail but considering it's in a Middle Grade novel I'm not sure if kids will be able to fully grasp it. It was very reminiscent of Ultraviolet by R.J. Anderson where the main character has synesthesia, a neurological condition where letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored (color synesthesia). There are other variations of synesthesia but that is most common. Jinx's condition appears to be a variation on this and I was highly intrigued.As far as the main reason for not personally loving it as much as I had hoped it was due to the juvenile writing. Here's one example:'Jinx had heard Wanderers mention it. It led up into the Glass Mountains. Jinx had never seen mountains. There was a lot in the Urwald he'd never seen.'I've read Middle Grades novels before that I was able to breeze through and completely enjoy and have complete faith that in passing it on to my kids to read that they would also be able to understand and enjoy it. This just didn't happen to be one of them. That doesn't mean that this wasn't a cute concept or that children won't enjoy this one, I just don't believe that this one is one that can also be enjoyed as much by adult readers.I'm actually unclear as to who the target audience would be because the writing style would lead me to believe I could give it to my 9 year old to read but if I handed him this book (at 368 pages) he would look at me like I was nuts and promptly give it back to me. It's an extremely long book for the apparent age group. Either way I think younger children that are fans of fantasy novels (and patient readers that can get through long books) will enjoy this one definitely.

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