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A review by gbliss
Capture the Flag by Kate Messner
2.0
Actually, considering the hour and switch out of Daylight Savings Time, I'm not sure what day I finished this.
I have to continually remind myself the target age range for this book, but then I think that I am excusing flaws just because the readers are so young.
This book has many of the familiar stock elements of an MG mystery -- annoyingly precocious and unrealistically independent children and each one has some special talent that is the single dominating aspect of their personality and which, so nicely, ties to the solution of the mystery.
The actual solution was staggeringly obvious (again, I remind myself of the target age range and weigh the number of mysteries I have read vs the number read by your average, oh, 9-12 year old.) The book reads like stage directions for a slap dash TV episode in too many sections, providing "action" scenes that are meant to be suspenseful but really just end up being tedious, repetitive, and confusing.
The book took forever to get actually get rolling and move beyond Square Two -- we got hints of Square Three every once in a while at the beginning, only to bounce back to Square Two time and time again.
The airport in question has no resemblance to any 21st century airport I have been in, let alone Washington National. I am not looking for ultra-realistic verisimilitude in an MG mystery, but the plot-convenient-suspension of reality gets old.
On to the next in the series. Out of curiosity, not desire.
I have to continually remind myself the target age range for this book, but then I think that I am excusing flaws just because the readers are so young.
This book has many of the familiar stock elements of an MG mystery -- annoyingly precocious and unrealistically independent children and each one has some special talent that is the single dominating aspect of their personality and which, so nicely, ties to the solution of the mystery.
The actual solution was staggeringly obvious (again, I remind myself of the target age range and weigh the number of mysteries I have read vs the number read by your average, oh, 9-12 year old.) The book reads like stage directions for a slap dash TV episode in too many sections, providing "action" scenes that are meant to be suspenseful but really just end up being tedious, repetitive, and confusing.
The book took forever to get actually get rolling and move beyond Square Two -- we got hints of Square Three every once in a while at the beginning, only to bounce back to Square Two time and time again.
The airport in question has no resemblance to any 21st century airport I have been in, let alone Washington National. I am not looking for ultra-realistic verisimilitude in an MG mystery, but the plot-convenient-suspension of reality gets old.
On to the next in the series. Out of curiosity, not desire.