Friday Reads: #TMGReadAlong - The Witches by Roald Dahl!

Hello there again!

As my second review for this week's Friday Reads I have this month's book for The Midnight Garden Classic YA & MG challenge and readalong!

This month's book it was a very apt & Halloweenie book that I think I would have enjoyed more as a child than I did as an adult.

The Witches by Roald Dahl

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I ended up really enjoying this book but I was so very put off by the beginning and the insistence on the evil of witches and them being ONLY women... It rubbed me the wrong way and it really took me a while to get into the story!

Once I managed to get past my irritation and dislike of the insistence on the evilness of women as witches (I think this is an issue of me reading this one for the first time as an adult and not as a kid) I found this one a really endearing and creepy book!

I loved the relationship between our main character and his Norwegian grandmamma and how they both found comfort in each other and how she tells him about the witches and how they become partners in crime in both adventures and fights against the witches!

The creepy factor in this book is quite high and I liked it, making it perfect as a Halloween read and as October's book for the #TMGReadAlong! The description of the witches, the presence and evil from the High Witch herself, little boys turned into mice!

I also enjoyed how the ending was hopeful and full of planning and plotting and fighting the evil witches for our boy and his grandmamma, even if it is a very open ending, since we don't know what will happen despite their plans.

All in all, I give it 3 stars because I ended up enjoying it, I loved the grandmamma but I really hated the characterization of witches and women-witches from the very beginning.



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Saturday Pages: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett!!!

Hi there everyone!

The weekend is here and I have to work, but I had a lovely lazy and full of reading day off yesterday, so I will not complain!

Today as my first Saturday Pages review I have The Midnight Garden's Classic YA & MG challenge book for March! As per usual (except for last month) it was a book I had not read before and as per usual, I thoroughly loved and enjoyed it! As usual I will be taking part in their discussion post and writing my usual looong babbling novel of a comment, and I have my own review up here!

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Another gem of a book discovered via the #tmgreadalong. I really am extremely happy that I decided to join the ladies at The Midnight Garden in their classic middle grade & young adult challenge last year, and I do plan to continue to be part of as it as long as they have it!

I was intrigued by the beginning and despite our lil Mary being quite contrary I felt immensely bad for her. She was ignored and spoiled and unloved and she didn't even know what she was missing, which is the worst part of the whole thing.

Then she is taken to England and gets stuck in another grand house where she might not lack anything except love again, but thankfully for her she doesn't have the same kind of servants attending her, but a young pure Yorkshire girl that takes no nonsense from her. I simply loved the change in Mary as she was first a lil forced and then allowed to play on her own and explore and be a child outside!

And I absolutely loved her determination to find the Secret Garden and to make sure it was kept alive! I adored how she was so different with Dickon and Martha and how she loved everything about them and their family and how she stopped thinking herself as above them and never acted like she would have before. She might have been acting out of selfish reasons, but she was kinder that you could have expected her to be!

I was quite surprised when we got introduced to Colin, the small Rajah, and the biggest tyrant you could imagine. I could barely conjure any sorry feelings for him at first, and I was beyond happy when in one of his "fits" Mary came to him and confronted him with her own "spoiled girl" manners! Who would have thought that Mary could be such a great influence, along with Dickon, the red breasted robin, Dickon's menagerie and loads of fresh air!

I just loved how important family was in this book, and how it showed the influence of good examples and encouragement can be. It's also quite a tongue in cheek dig at the way children in afluent families were raised, primed & pampered but without real affection, and it's a wonder how those kids grew to be even half functioning adults!

And I love how doing something with your hands, making things grow and watching and interacting with others that are different from you can be both eye opening and sobering. It's not like planting a flower or two and interacting with someone with a different upbringing will solved every problem for spoiled kids... but it will make them confront themselves with different realities and with some luck make them think about what they have and what other's have and not.

I adored the descriptions of the moor, the gardens, the secret garden and all the food that they were getting! It made long for some warm oatmeal and buns and scones and tea time... *sigh*. It was a wonderfully visual book! I could clearly picture myself in every room and every part of the gardens, and even at the cottage in the moor!

If I had to pick a favourite character it would be Susan Sowerby, even if we don't get to have her in the flesh in the pages till the last part of the book, she's very much present at every turn of the page, with her advice, her observations and her considerable common sense wisdom! She is the archetype of a mother figure and I loved when we finally got her to interact directly with Mary and Colin!

A wonderful book that made me long to visit the moor, skip around the secret garden, have some buns and scones with my tea and made me long for the Magic. Well deserved 4.5 stars!



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