Hello, and welcome to my stop on The House at the End of the Sea blog tour. Thank you to Kaleidoscopic Tours and Andersen Press for having me!
Title: The House at the End of the Sea
Author: Victoria M. Adams
Published: 2nd May 2024
Publisher: Andersen Press
Genre: Middle grade, magical
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Saffi doesn’t want her new life, living with her dad, little brother and old-fashioned grandparents in their B&B by the sea. She is grieving for her mum and longs for things to go back to normal.
But this new home is anything but normal: the walls change colour, a face appears in the mirror, and the pantry is suddenly filled with fancy food. When a party of extraordinary visitors arrive at midnight, Saffi begins to realise that her family has a dark, magical secret. It will take all her bravery to discover the truth and find a way into another world…
Waterstones
Huge thank you to Kaleidoscopic Tours and Andersen Press for having me on The House at the End of the Sea blog tour, and for sending me a copy of the novel to read!
This is a fun and quick middle grade novel about family, friendships and faeries! I loved the fast paced nature of this book, it flew past, and all the action took place over a short period of time.
I loved the main character Saffi. She seemed so mature for her age, and had obviously had to do some serious growing up recently. Her relationship with her younger brother was lovely. The way she cared for him, and was so in tune with how he was feeling was so well written and really heartwarming to read.
Family and family relationships play are really strong part in the novel, as Saffi comes to discover that her father’s family made a dangerous deal with some magical creatures. As with many middle grade novels, the adults are not doing their best in terms of child care and child safety. I don’t mind this in middle grade novels so much, I realise its useful for the plot. It did annoy me slightly how careless the adults were in this novel, but not to the detriment of my enjoyment!
I enjoyed the magical element of the novel. The magical creatures in the novel are fun to read, and very mysterious. I also enjoyed the conversation around accepting gift from magical fae, and how Saffi’s family had been slavers and generally used their good luck to step on others. I thought this was an interesting element to the novel, and I wasn’t expecting it.
Overall I enjoyed this magical novel. The house being slightly haunted was fun, the magical curse/gift was well written and used, and Saffi was such a fun main character!
Huge thank you to Kaleidoscopic Tours and Andersen Press for having me on The House at the End of the Sea blog tour!
Buy The House at the End of the Sea from Waterstones or Bookshop.org (*both affiliate links*)
