The story was okay. It was pretty simple and straightforward. In a lot of respects, it’s pretty predictable: secret group of people, one of the members longs for the outside world, meets an outsider, the outsider messes things up. See? That basic plot has been played out many times in many books. There’s nothing wrong with that but I just had hoped for a bit more of an interesting story.

What I really liked was the world building. I love these secret worlds that exist in our world. I love seeing how the people use things in a different way. The author describes things fairly well and the illustrations give you a nice mental image of how things look. My mental picture of the house was okay but actually seeing it (in a movie perhaps) would have been even better.

While I liked the characters well enough, there wasn’t anything fantastic about them. They were pretty standard and a bit forgettable. There’s nothing about them that really sticks out in my mind.

The bottom line? I liked it fine. I probably won’t be rushing out to get the next book in the series anytime soon.