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janeeyre_914716's review
5.0
Gustav Gloom was a book I found while exploring the Libby app and since they were pretty quick listen to (with the speed up too) and seeing some reviews on here and being surprised at how many thoroughly enjoyed these books; I decided to jump on the bandwagon.
I have to say this Gustav Gloom is in that top list of mine for a special and unique one of a kind characters. Even Fernie What is special and one who clearly didn't look at Gustav Gloom, the strange, unhappiest boy in the world, and when she goes to chase her cat who's chasing its own shadow, she ends up in the adventure of a lifetime.
While having her adventure and getting to know the kind of person Gustav really is, she comes to find a friend out of him and vice versa when he's surprised she would even consider him one. This story was indeed for a children's book was clever, has great messages, and super original and well executed. And by the end of this book, I'm now excited for book 2 and feel too invested in this series now and too invested with Gustav Gloom and Fernie What! :D
I have to say this Gustav Gloom is in that top list of mine for a special and unique one of a kind characters. Even Fernie What is special and one who clearly didn't look at Gustav Gloom, the strange, unhappiest boy in the world, and when she goes to chase her cat who's chasing its own shadow, she ends up in the adventure of a lifetime.
While having her adventure and getting to know the kind of person Gustav really is, she comes to find a friend out of him and vice versa when he's surprised she would even consider him one. This story was indeed for a children's book was clever, has great messages, and super original and well executed. And by the end of this book, I'm now excited for book 2 and feel too invested in this series now and too invested with Gustav Gloom and Fernie What! :D
lmn9812's review
4.0
Continuing with my current MG obsession, especially with anything dark and creepy I moved on to this AMAZINGLY titled/illustrated book, Gustav Gloom and the People taker. I really enjoyed the originality of the whole shadow world and the mystery of who Gustav is. Fernie is a kick-ass main character - she doesn't give up and is brave and curious and just wonderful. I loved that I felt that we knew her entire family as well - and they were all given distinct personalities. The people taker and his beast is scary and horrible - although I wished we'd found out more about him and what happened to the people he took - hopefully something that is going to be explained in the next of these delightful books - which I will DEFINITLEY be picking up.
qkjgrubb's review
2.0
This book had great promise. Beautiful cover, great illustrations, but the PROSE. Ugh. The prose was so unwieldy at times. I read this book out loud to my five kids and I found it very difficult to get past LONG sentences with six, seven or eight prepositional phrases in them. How can a writer expect to describe gripping action and scary scenes when the sentences are so long, dragging everything down? I know this is a personal style issue and perhaps the author's intention was NOT to be read aloud, but it drove this reader crazy. I would have enjoyed this book so much more if the sentence length was varied, if a heartless editor had removed most of the prepositional phrases and if I understood Gustav's story from the beginning. (For a title character almost nothing is told about him and he put me to sleep.) I wanted to throw the book across the room during the third act, when the heroine has to do something really, really fast and the stakes are high, she GIVES A SPEECH! No. Please. Save the day first, don't go on and on and on. All that to say, my kids did like it, but I'm not going to encourage reading the sequel.
carolynaugustyn's review
3.0
I've been in the mood for spooky middle age books recently (probably sparked by my reading of Coraline) and this definitely had the right vibe I was looking for! First- the book itself is super lovely looking, the cover is mostly what drew me to take this out of the library. There are full paged illustrations at the start of every chapter and these are so gorgeous and fun, I spent a lot of time just looking at the pictures. The story itself is good but the prose was a little descriptive and long winded at times for my taste. There were some pages that I would have to read several times because I wasn't sure I followed the logic correctly. But I did really enjoy the characters a lot- especially Gustav. The idea of the shadow house is very interesting and cool and I look forward to reading more in this series to see what future adventures Fernie and Gustav get into.
hanapowell's review against another edition
3.0
I’ve had this book since I was a child and never read it until now. As an adult I found it interesting but still a tad boring in some parts. Also a little creepy to me and wonder if it would scare children. Overall for a kids book pretty good I just don’t think I would have enjoyed it back then.
bobbiejowoo's review against another edition
I didn’t have any complaints about this one- I just couldn’t connect to the story.
I love middlegrade reads, but this one may’ve been a little too immature for me?
The art is adorable though!
I love middlegrade reads, but this one may’ve been a little too immature for me?
The art is adorable though!
kerryanndunn's review against another edition
2.0
"Her whole life had been ruined just because she happened to move in across the street from Gustav Gloom."
This was a disappointment. The storyline sounded so fun, but the writing is awkward, rambling in a bad way, and the action sequences are confusing. This book had a lot of potential but ultimately fell flat.
This was a disappointment. The storyline sounded so fun, but the writing is awkward, rambling in a bad way, and the action sequences are confusing. This book had a lot of potential but ultimately fell flat.
lindacbugg's review against another edition
4.0
pretty cute-I'm hoping the pics are in color and not just pencil.
book_nut's review against another edition
4.0
Tongue-in-cheek, and a surprisingly good creepy story.