Review Detail

The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell had all the elements of a great Middle Grade adventure, but sadly it fell a little short for me.

My favorite aspect of the story was the setting. It was fun to explore The Land of Stories and meet all the fairy-tale characters. I really liked that all the side characters had their own unique personalities, especially the most famous ones. I mean, we have Goldilocks the fugitive with a smart mouth and then the self-centered Little Red Riding. The main characters, though, were pretty one-dimensional. It felt like Alex was always embarrassed of her brother and Conner was always grumpy. I wanted a little ore from them.

The pacing didn't work for me either. Often there were no transitions and we'd go from looking at the forest up ahead to suddenly being in the forest on the next sentence. It was too abrupt and made it feel a little bit like stop-motion. It really pulled me out of the story and didn't let me get pulled in for very long.

I didn't find any of the “big reveals” surprising, either. In fact, I figured many of them out WAY ahead of time and found myself rolling my eyes whenever Conner and Alex would be confounded by this or that. I did, however, really like the Evil Queen's backstory.

The Nutshell: The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell had a lot of really good elements, but it just didn't work for me. The journey and setting is fun, but the twists, main characters, and pacing really bogged down the story. I'm hoping for some more growth with Conner and Alex in the sequel and maybe a little more of their mom, as well.

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