Book Review: City of Ghosts & Tunnel of Bones – Victoria Schwab

Cassidy Blake series #1 & #2

CITY OF GHOSTS

Rating: 3/5 🌟🌟🌟

Genre: Middle-Grade, Dark Fantasy, Ghosts

Review:

It’s October and that means Halloween. So of course I couldn’t go through October without reading a ghost story.

Cassidy Blake is a 12yo normal girl with parents who write about the paranormal. Or I should say she ‘used’ to be normal until her brush with death which is when she began seeing ghosts.

WHAT I LIKED:
Plot—This story showed such promise, with that easy flow of words that made it fun to read. The plot-line, with the intriguing details about ghosts and the Veil, the concept of the connection between them, and Cassidy’s role in it all, caught my attention and curiosity.

Side-characters—Jacob and Lara were my favorite characters in the story. Jacob, with the mystery surrounding him and his retorts. Lara, with her snark and no-nonsense attitude. They were the better additions to the story.

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:
I’m sorry to say I didn’t like the main character much. At first I did like Cassidy and she seemed interesting. The first half of the book was really good. But Cassidy’s tendency for making stupid decisions and not using common sense turned me off.

The premise for the story was terrific but I didn’t warm up to Cassidy. The fact that I didn’t like her just colored my view of the rest of the story.

TUNNEL OF BONES

Rating: 1/5 🌟

Review:

Tunnel of Bones was super disappointing. I really didn’t like Cassidy. At first the book seemed okay but I hated how she kept doing stupid stuff without even some common sense. Her I-Keep-Making-Stupid-Mistakes-Without-Even-Thinking-It-Through routine got old real fast. Plus, it’s the second book and she’s still a wrecking ball. I expected her to get just a bit wiser but no. She was super annoying all throughout the book.

I think if the character had been a better one, not prone to absolute stupidity, I would have enjoyed this book more.

Blurb: Ever since Cass almost drowned (okay, she did drown, but she doesn’t like to think about it), she can pull back the Veil that separates the living from the dead . . . and enter the world of spirits. Her best friend is even a ghost. So things are already pretty strange. But they’re about to get much stranger. When Cass’s parents start hosting a TV show about the world’s most haunted places, the family heads off to Edinburgh, Scotland. Here, graveyards, castles, and secret passageways teem with restless phantoms. And when Cass meets a girl who shares her “gift,” she realizes how much she still has to learn about the Veil — and herself. And she’ll have to learn fast. The city of ghosts is more dangerous than she ever imagined.