A review by kimchihae
The Frame-Up by Wendy McLeod MacKnight

3.0

IT WAS alright...obviously I'm not in the target demographic, but I typically read a lot of middle grade fiction and have called it my favourite genre countless times. The concept was intriguing, Night at the Museum crossed with Wreck-It-Ralph meets art history in Canada. The characters had their arcs and you learned about them and saw them develop, but some moments were just...frustrating. Things were going down a very predictable path, way too many hints were dropped in the fact that characters just had "a bad feeling" about someone or another. All the characters seemed to fit together too neatly and the conclusion, while sweet, also felt too easy...these paintings have been around for HUNDREDS of years and I get that someone like eternally young Mona Dunn would jump at the chance to be more than her painting, but at the same time everyone else seemed to be living their perfectly fine lives in that incredibly rich and vibrant world behind the frame, it felt like things changed so drastically by the end, and everyone was throwing away everything that they thought to be true. I dunno. It was a fun read...and perhaps throwing away an old system that doesn't work is what people - or paintings - need sometimes.