Small spaces by Katherine Arden
Good morning Books Lovers,
How are you finding this October? This fall? In some regions it was disastrous, in others like mine it brought first a little coolness and then again the heat like summer. And with the beginning of the University it became a challenge to take a moment to read, yet this week strangely I have already managed to bring you two reviews, with this one today 3 and another that I have planned for the end of week four: )
On Monday I brought you an LGBTQ +, yesterday also LGBTQ but with an M / M story and today instead we totally change genre and go to Middle-grade, a book by Mondadori entitles Small spaces, the first of a saga, written by the author of The Nightingale and The Bear Katherine Arden.
The outing of terror is a book that I highly recommend especially in this period, Halloween is near and the adventure that Ollie and her friends live is just under the banner of Halloween with scarecrows, corn mazes, ghosts and a villain who can stay in the our world only thanks to them.
I must admit that I am not a lover of horror sometimes reading it in the evening before going to sleep, I am not saying I was scared of course, I recommend it to every child and adolescent, but I perceived those dark notes of the genre, and maybe that’s exactly why I liked it a lot, because the author was able to insert certain details to scare a little but without really frightening.
The real story begins when Ollie “steals” so to speak this mysterious book that initially seems like a story from the past to her, but she soon discovers that it is actually much more. And it is during a school trip to visit the farm of the woman that Ollie took the book from that things go wrong.
It had all already been programmed by the smiling man, but he hadn’t foreseen Ollie’s tenacity in holding out and thinking with a clear mind even in the most difficult situations. Ollie is basically a child, yes, but she has her ideals well-grounded, and she went through some difficult times after her mother’s death which helped to make her even stronger.
Together with Coco and Brian they manage to save themselves and also the city, their schoolmates who were on the bus with them during the trip, their teacher, and all those who over the years, for one reason or another, had been turned into scarecrows. They helped the ghosts to find peace … all thanks to the rediscovery of that book that in its own way gave Ollie directions to save the day.
But as I told you this is only the first book and I really hope that Mondadori will soon bring the others to Italy because I am really curious to know what Ollie, Coco and Brian will have to face in their next adventures. It will be nice to find out, if I didn’t already have many books to read and retrieve I would read the remaining three in English, let’s just hope we don’t have to wait much longer.
