I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith - 3 Stars

[Diana]

Through six turbulent months of 1934, 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain keeps a journal, filling three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries about her home, a ruined Suffolk castle, and her eccentric and penniless family. By the time the last diary shuts, there have been great changes in the Mortmain household, not the least of which is that Cassandra is deeply, hopelessly, in love.

The novel was quite funny (I especially enjoyed the episode with Rose in her fur coat). It has a lot of love triangles which were really interesting to read about. The only thing that prevented me from really liking the novel was that I didn't like the characters. Some of them were even annoying. For example, I kept forgetting that Rose was older than Cassandra just because she was acting like a child.

There were some interesting twists but by the end of the book, I really wanted it to end. Maybe it was too young adult-ish for me because I was irritated a lot with how immature the people in this novel were.

[Karin]

I wasn't impressed with this book, either, but suspect I'd have liked it a great deal if I'd read it when I was 10-14.