Today I'm reviewing Brave Anna and the Star Compass by Jennifer Garret, published by Willow Moon Publishing in 2020.
For this review, I have a guest with me today: my almost nine years old daughter, who has read the book with me. She shares her opinion of the book in this video.
Overview of points discussed in this review:
Strengths of the book
Clear theme/point
Beautiful descriptions
Brilliant/satisfying ending
Weaknesses of the book
Believable/genuine characters/emotional connection and character arc
Bad pacing
Plot conveniences/lacking believability
Many errors, and bad stylistic choices
Inconsistencies
Sentence structure (many sentences far too long for a middle grade reader)
In all, this book needed another look from a developmental editor, a line edit, and most definitely one more proofread. The two major issues we had with the story were the bad pacing (we felt rushed through the adventure and were not given time to get to know Anna), and the character development. The character development was truly lacking. The emotions were not clear on the page--we could not relate to her.