3.71 AVERAGE

adventurous dark funny hopeful inspiring reflective relaxing sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
dark mysterious tense fast-paced

An interesting story of trading secrets for money.
dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

It was an excellent fictional YA story, although it was marketed to be found journals that the author just shared. 

It's very fascinating and I loved the ending. 

This takes place in the early Victorian era which is a setting I very much enjoy, however it feels rather redundant as we get little to no description of our surroundings and also spend no time world building or having any scenes take place in any of the unique locations of the time. There's an issue also of this book not knowing what it wanted to be  early on we get reference to an animal called a jocastar so you'd be forgiven for thinking this was set in a fantasy world but that's not the case and there's never another fantastical or mythical element or creature mentioned again. That coupled with the fact that we never get any reveal as to why a person is paying people for their secrets and hoarding them means this ends on a very flat note. This did get rather dark at moments for a middle-grade book delving into topics like child abuse and murder and at the end of the book it also gives some good historical background to the period. But alas this had a lot of potential which it never attempted to fulfil but instead decided to play it safe. 

3.5/5

I work in an elementary school, and I bought this book at my school's book fair back in April. I was attracted initially by the cover and then by the synopsis on the back. I thought it sounded like an intriguing book.

And so it was. It was also highly enjoyable and delightfully creepy. It's also very fast paced, and once I began reading I could not force myself to stop. I read the entire book in less than 24 hours.

The story is told through excerpts--or fragments, as the book calls them--taken from Ludlow Fitch's memoirs, secrets from various characters as told to Joe and recorded by Ludlow in The Black Book of Secrets, and--as the author tells us in the 'note' at the beginning of the book--by herself filling in the gaps of the narrative not covered by the first two. I know, it sounds hard to follow (and that's probably because of the lumbering sentence I just typed), but really it's not.

The end of the book seems to lend itself to the possibility of a sequel, and while I would prefer that not happen, I would definitely read any further adventures of Ludlow and Joe.

Joe Zabbidou is a secret pawnbroker, who pays for people’s secrets and records them in a black book. Hence the title. Ludlow Fitch is a pickpocket who escapes from his parents as they prepare to sell his teeth to keep them in gin. Pagus Parvus a small desolate mountain village is where these two characters meet and so unfolds a tale that has echoes of Dickens in its atmosphere, dark landscape, gravediggers, street urchins, and a fiendish landlord.

The story never dawdles as Zabbidou collects the town's catalog of unhappiness, while his own secret intentions are an enigma to everyone even Ludlow Fitch who he has befriended and taken under his wing.

The author uses the device of claiming to have found extracts of Joe's book and Ludlow's memoirs, bridging the gaps with her imagination. The images used are deep-rooted imagery (rat pies, people buried alive) and contrasts of light and dark to illuminate the loneliness of wealth and despair. The story has a share of suspense and the intriguing idea that fear of our own actions is our greatest enemy.

The ending leaves an opening for future volumes. This book is a smart, curiously thrilling tale, which for all the grisly details, gets at themes about self-determination and trust. Original and engrossing, The Black Book Of Secrets is a compelling read.

Reminds me of Ranger's Apprentice series but with less action - more focused on people's secrets, the guilt that keeps them up at night, and what happens when The Secret Pawnbroker comes to town.

3.5 stars rounded up

I saw an early proof of this where the opening lines of the book were in stark white on a black field for the front cover and it caught my interested enough to pick it up at a used book sale. It was a quick, engaging read. The idea of the pawnbroker as a travelling confessional, the representation of Twain's dictum that the lack of money is the root of all evil and what the injection of liquidity into a corrupt, calcified society twine nicely for the the simple morality tale. This was a much better childrens' book than the disappointing Walls Within Walls.