Title: The Reptile Room [A Series of Unfortunate Events 2]
Author: Lemony Snicket
Genre: Middle Grade, Mystery
Length: 169
Rating: 4 Star
Series Review: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
Description/Synopsis:
The story may seems cheery at first, when the Baudelaire children spend time in the company of some interesting reptiles and a giddy uncle…
Review – MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
I think this book was more heartbreaking than the first one.
We go into this section of the story into a lovely household with an Uncle that treats the kids amazingly. He tends to all their needs and desires and really rather spoils them rotten. I love Uncle Monty, though I couldn’t take him seriously in audio book form. The voice that was used for him was like a drunk British guy. I suggest this book in non-audio format for this one reason. Uncle Monty was not a drunk! He was lovely and had awesome animals.
Sadly, we are also told straight away that we shouldn’t expect these happy times to last very long because Uncle Monty was going to die and the children did not pick up on any of the clues or think of any way to stop the events in time to save him. My heart broke for the children. Again they kind of tried to stop the bad things from happening, but they couldn’t seem to get any help.
Poor kids.
The writing style though really good does have a downside to me. It was present in the first book as well but I didn’t want to mention it in that review, the story tends to break out of its rhythm to explain what a number of the words used mean. While I am sure this is good for younger readers, I find this quite annoying. Much like the children get frustrated that the adults in their lives are always explaining what words mean when they already know their meaning. The only thing that keeps it from driving me totally nuts was that sometimes the explaining of the words isn’t always straight out of the dictionary and were given a humorous twist to it.
So yes, I enjoyed this book very much despite the annoyances. I feel so sorry for the children and things are not going to get better for them. If you liked the first read this one because for the small moment which Uncle Monty was alive in this book it was very nice to see them have those moments. I worry about what other things they will have to face.
Till Next Time…
