'Escape From Shadow Island' by Paul Adam

I started reading 'Escape From Shadow Island' by Paul Adam a couple of weeks ago, but other commitments stopped me from really getting into it until yesterday. The blurb reads extremely well. Very short, but you want to start reading straight away. The first chapter is equally addictive. It is basically about a young escapologist, Max Cassidy, whose father has been murdered and his mother has been imprisoned for it. When a mysterious visitor arrives in his dressing room after a show and hints that his father is still alive, Max does the inevitable - he looks for his father. Travelling back to South America with his guardian and on stage assistant, Max endeavours to discover the whereabouts of his father and what really happened.
Adam has constructed the novel extremely well and created a real page turner. He keeps a steady pace and some of the action is truly riveting, if a bit far fetched. It comes across though, as the first in a series of books and, after finishing it, I felt a little short changed and didn't have that sense of finality. There were just not enough of the loose ends tied up to make me rave about the book. Beginning great. Middle a real page turner. End frustrating.

On to the next one ...

reading @ the beach

Actually the last time I went to the beach it was to ride ponies not read.... any blogging I do will have to be about reading on the deck.... a nice place to sit on a bean bag and read - or maybe reading in the bush as we have some lovely mature bush and it's lovely to sit among the ferns and trees, read and listen to the stream on a hot day.

I have begun dipping into the box of books. My 10 year old son read Bud, not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis and enjoyed it initially though lost interest as he said the plot got hard to follow and understand.

My 7 year old daughter and I loved reading Sunday Chutney by Aaron Blabey. Simple text and really appealing distinctive illustrations.

Happy Reading everyone,
Kate