Manjunath Sagar Sagar itibaren Clear Creek, MO, USA itibaren Clear Creek, MO, USA

It took me longer than I wanted to finish this book, but I finally did it and it was not disappointing at all. The characters' age kind of started to put me off but than I just ignored that I knew their ages and pictured them being at least 18 years old and it worked out. I am uber excited to read the second and third book. I love cliffhangers and this one left me with a big one. So onto the second. lol

Overall I thought this was a cute book, but it just didn't have anything in it that made me love it or want to totally immerse myself in it. I felt that the book was very similar to a lot of books that I have read lately with a boy as the main character who was slightly different than other kids his age and something strange and unbelievable happens to him (i.e. Percy and the Olympians, the Alcatraz series and Fablehaven series - all of which I enjoyed more than this one). I was kind of annoyed by some of the characters in the book - I didn't think they were developed or complete enough and some of their personalities were just plain odd. I also couldn't stand some of the author's writing style with his annoying, supposed to be funny similes all throughout the book. There was at least one for every couple of pages: "He looked down at his toes, poking out from his red crocheted socks like little mice searching for food." or "His mind still spun, the clues of M.G. bouncing around his brain like renegade alphabet soup." The ending was pretty action packed but the rest of the book was a little slow. I enjoyed the fact that the boy was given this puzzle to solve, was really scared by things that were going on and he chose to tell his father and involve him in helping to solve the puzzle. There was a lot left unexplained that I suppose will be addressed in future books in the series. Hopefully the author's writing style will improve and develop more in the next book.