Serafina and the Black Cloak

For some reason I read more and more Middle Grade books this year, not like that is an issue. This one was a bit of a weird one, though, so I guess that makes a bit of a difference. Not gonna lie, at some point I wasn't really sure who were the target audience and to me that wasn't one of the absolutely positive things about it. Lets just take it little by little. Serafina is a weird little girl who lives in the basement of a grand estate with her dad, who is responsible for keeping the machines working. For some reason he is hiding her as she does her things like catching rats and sneaking around, up until kids start to disappear and Serafina has to find a friend in the loner nephew of the estate's owner to find out what is happening to all the children around them. First thing first, I kinda liked the prose. It was pretty sweet at some point, which is something I really appreciate when an author is writing for children. Some, it can be a bit of a challenge for the young ones, but it's something I would encourage if I had any kids; it can be pretty rewarding. At some places I felt the sentences structures were a bit repetitive and some synonyms could have been used in places, but all in all it had good vocabulary and it was a pleasant reading experience. With the plots and the characters things go a bit less than stellar. I understand that this is a short book, really. Still, I felt that the characters weren't particularly deep. Serafina felt plain quirky sometimes with her extraordinary skills and all. When we get an explanation... it's not really that surprising, you could see the parallels between her and some other.... creatures. Could have been done in a slightly more mysterious way. The same goes for the plot. We see that the world of the novel has some interesting things, hidden ideas and creatures, magic all around. We don't see much of it. It's a series, so it can be opened up, but by the end the lack of exploring the world leads to a certain solution of the issue that felt really abrupt. Serafina comes up with a plan that was absolutely bonkers from the beginning with almost no way of working, but of course you just knew that nothing really bad is going to happen to her. It made no sense, because it wasn't properly built up. The villain is the same; you find out ridiculously soon who is behind all and it took a lot of fun out of it for me. For a light read this was fine, I had no negative feelings about it, but it also wasn't absolutely brilliant. Somehow it got pretty bizarre in places and it wasn't really too deep. Was this for kids with rotting, disintegrating humans? Was it for teens with its lack of complex characters and proper story? I don't even know. It was fine. I didn't give it 3 stars because it was bad in any way, more like it lacked in certain ways. With an additional 100 pages or so it could have been coloured in a bit more, it could have been given something more special and more formed. I am not saying I am not reading any more of the series, I just think I would recommend [b:Greenglass House 18222716 Greenglass House (Greenglass House, #1) Kate Milford https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1379952488s/18222716.jpg 25656381] before this one, even [b:The Blackthorn Key 23270216 The Blackthorn Key (The Blackthorn Key, #1) Kevin Sands https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1433428562s/23270216.jpg 42810383]. Good night and keep your eyes on the overdressed people!