the Land of Elyon series: book one
genres: children’s. fantasy. christianlit.
The Review
This is one of my absolute favorite children’s fantasy books. Pretty sure I read this like 25 times. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for years and I couldn’t resist re-reading. Thoroughly entertaining, The Dark Hills Divide has a little bit of everything a young reader needs: adventure, mystery, secrets, magic, puzzles, and a little bit of rule breaking. The mysteries and puzzles are intriguing enough for anyone to follow and I found the animal magic to be adorable. It’s not an overly-complicated or particularly original story, but it’s fun and that’s good enough for me when it comes to a kid’s book. As an adult, I was hoping for more information on the Land’s background and history, but I’m looking forward to reading the next three books again to fulfill this need!
Characters:
Alexa is a wonderful 12 year old character to follow in her adventures through Bridewell. She’s brave, smart, snarky, and really shines through in this story. I absolutely love that this series is led by such a great female character and there’s no allusion to her needing a male companion. I’m all for girl MCs! The other characters are just as colorful and easily distinguishable — something I sometimes struggle with in children’s books.
Set-up:
Have you seen that cover art? I’m not gonna lie, that was art was 100% why I picked this up as a kid. The writing is very easy to follow — a children’s book through and through. I remember some of the anecdotes or inferred sentences went over my head as a kid, but nothing so complicated that it ruined the story for me. I didn’t notice any typos or missed edits.
Spoilers below: highlight text block to view
The only thing I wish was different about the book was something that happened in the last few pages. [ Both Yipes and Alexa lost their ability to talk to animals! It’s a great way to show maturity and character growth but I thought the animals were such rich characters themselves and I would have liked to hear more from them in the future books.
Additional notes: The Christian aspect to this book is pretty obvious, but I didn’t find it to be overwhelming in any way. It’s certainly worth the read even if this genre addition makes you leery.
approx read time: less than 24 hours (although idk if this is an accurate time considering I blasted through this in one sitting. #SorryNotSorry)
Rating: 5 out of 5 Screems™
Next book in the series: Beyond the Valley of Thorns
Ownership: I used to own this, but have since donated it to my local library