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ivy pocketWhat: Anyone But Ivy Pocket (Ivy Pocket #1) by Caleb Krisp

Who: Bloomsbury Children’s

When: April 9th 2015

How: A copy of this novel was provided by Bloomsbury Australia for review.

Ivy Pocket is a twelve-year-old maid of no importance, with a very lofty opinion of herself. Dumped in Paris by the Countess Carbunkle, who would rather run away to South America than continue in Ivy’s companionship, our young heroine (of sorts) finds herself with no money and no home to go to … until she is summoned to the bedside of the dying Duchess of Trinity.

For the princely sum of £500 (enough to buy a carriage, and possibly a monkey), Ivy agrees to courier the Duchess’s most precious possession – the Clock Diamond – to England, and to put it around the neck of the revolting Matilda Butterfield on her twelfth birthday. It’s not long before Ivy finds herself at the heart of a conspiracy involving mischief, mayhem and murder.

Illustrated in humorous gothic detail by Iacopo Bruno, Anyone But Ivy Pocket is just the beginning of one girl’s deadly comic journey to discover who she really is …

2cats2I really don’t know if this book is the most ridiculous or most entertaining thing I have ever read.

From the very beginning I was wary, for middle grade fiction books tend to be either hits or misses with me, and this one seemed extremely “quirky”. I nearly DNFd it about 25 pages in, because I didn’t know if I could continue reading it. Why? The following:

1 – The repetitive writing style. Namely “I have all the natural instincts of [insert something here]”, the way Ivy called everyone “dear”, the way Ivy lied about absolutely everything, and the number of times the word “fat” was used in every and any kind of variation.

2 – Ivy’s stupidity. I know the girl is only twelve, but I mean come on. The villain of the story was predictable from the moment we met her, and it took Ivy roughly 300 pages to come to the same conclusion.

3 – The utter ridiculousness of a lot of the story. There was cheesecake face planting and onion holding and all kinds of the same thing, and I found it a little too immature, I suppose, for my tastes.

4 – I felt like quite a bit of the story was filler. Not a lot happened, plot wise, but from the blurb you’d think it would be quite fast moving and actiony. But no. A lot of it is Ivy being stupid, and ignoring facts, and so on.

But.

But.

After a while, I found that I didn’t want to put it down, even though the aforementioned annoyances were still present in the book. And when I turned the last page, I wanted the sequel.

I think there is a lot of room for growth for Ivy’s character, a lot of room for an intriguing plot, and I also found myself becoming quite fond of the little thing and all her ridiculous character traits. I want to see where the story takes her, and I want her to have a happy ending.

So with that: Anyone But Ivy Pocket is a book for the light (and young) at heart, and is equal parts ridiculous and entertaining, and will somehow leave you wanting to read more.

© 2015, Chiara @ Books for a Delicate Eternity. All rights reserved.

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Posted on: May 26, 2015 • By: Chiara

2 Responses to Review: Anyone But Ivy Pocket by Caleb Krisp

  1. Cait reviewed some MG books the other day and I was commenting there that MG books are hard, because they are that much more immature and silly than YA. And it’s hard to figure out whether you like that or not. Sometimes it’s just TOO much :P

    • Chiara says:

      Right? I think there’s a fine line between acceptable silly, and feeling too immature silly. I think this was a bit on the latter side, unfortunately :/

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