A review by rara2018
Into the Gauntlet by Margaret Peterson Haddix

5.0

I expected to like this more than the rest do the series because, duh, it was written by the one and only Margaret Peterson Haddix. What I didn’t expect, though, was to legit smelly enjoy and be semi-moved by the sorry being told here. This was the first time all the children in the story felt like, well, children. They were scared and kind and sometimes made poor decisions but were ultimately driven to help each other regardless of the consequences. This was the realest story in the series with significantly elevated stakes, but we also got to see the characters as people instead of just caricatures (except maybe Isabel) since we got so many more perspectives than usual. The story was also funnier than the rest of the books and relied much less heavily on cheap humor from Dan. Definitely my favorite in the series and the first to make me not entirely regret deciding to read it.