The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell by Chris Colfer

Alex and Conner Bailey's world is about to change, in this fast-paced adventure that uniquely combines our modern day world with the enchanting realm of classic fairy tales. The Land of Stories tells the tale of twins Alex and Conner. Through the mysterious powers of a cherished book of stories, they leave their world behind and find themselves in a foreign land full of wonder and magic where they come face-to-face with the fairy tale characters they grew up reading about. But after a series of encounters with witches, wolves, goblins, and trolls alike, getting back home is going to be harder than they thought.

The Wishing Spell transports a twin brother and sister into the land of fairy tales. The Tenth Kingdom did a very similar storyline 16 years ago. If you want to visit fairy-tale land, just watch that mini series.

It's clear the author of the Wishing Spell, Chris Colfer loves fairy tales. His excitement is obvious, but his writing is incredibly sloppy. The prologue begins with Snow White demanding to know if her evil step mother ever loved her. Why should she answer her? She's evil. Let her stay evil....

Next the story jumps to children in a classroom talking about and writing papers about fairy tales. First of all, the children are 12. I don't think 12 year olds are writing 7 page papers with that sort of advanced language in it. The girl is a goody two shoes, the boy is lazy and blunt. Then they go to the land of fairy tales. Suddenly the girl is an adventure seeker and the boy is a bumbling idiot. Then, nearly every chapter (felt like every page almost) there was another fairy tale character mentioned. It was too much.

In short.... If you love fairy tales, and the new trend of all the fairy tales being in one place, you might enjoy this book. If you like better written fairy tales, or retellings, there are many better options out there. This story just felt like it dragged, and there was nothing really innovative about it.

Ever find yourself wishing for a Happily Ever After? What if, what we thought of fantastic stories are more than that!?

Conner and Alex are off on a fantastic journey, and they are trying to find their way back home. Now if they could only work through the land of stories without being killed or kidnapped.... but that seems to be the least of their worries. With all the twists and turns within the book, you will find this a hard one to put down until you finish the last page!

Some of the writing in the book seems to NOT be for kids, but with a few word changes for the purpose of reading it aloud to my children, it is very much an enjoyable read!

This was the book I've been reading with my nephew and niece for some time now. We finished it! It was wonderful. It captivated the kids (ages 12 and 9), and was really perfect for that age range. I also just loved it myself. A really impressive first novel!

Picked this up based on the reading challenges I am doing for August/September. This is one of my niece's favorite book series and since it fit the prompts I thought I'd pick it up and see why she loves it so much. It was definitely a quick fun read. I loved reading about all the fairy tale characters and seeing them all interact with each other. This is definitely a series that I could have seen myself reading back when I was in middle school. I could totally see this being made into a series on Netflix. Lots of fun and interesting characters in this book. Highly recommend for a series to pick up and read together with your children!

Listened to most of this on audio book and it was very well narrated.

Read this for August/September Bookopoly prompt of reading a Middle Grade book and August/September book bingo challenge of reading an audiobook.