Inkheart - Cornelia Funke - 4 stars

I read this book as a buddy read with a friend and also to push this series through on my series-a-thon for this year. This is a Middle Grade to YA book. I thought this would have been a lot better had it been written as an adult novel. I thought it had an adult feel to it, but since it is intended for younger audiences it was pretty tame. Even though I thought that so much more could have been done with it as an adult novel, it was still very engaging.

In this book we have Meggie and her father, Mo who absolutely loves books. Mo is a book binder and he restores old books back to how they first were. Mo is a different type of father, when he reads aloud, he pulls characters and/or objects out of the story he is reading, but that's not all he also could possibly lose someone into the that same story. Things go awry, so Meggie and her father are in for an adventure to make things right and reclaim someone they had lost.

I absolutely loved the plotline of this story. A modern day world with fairy tale characters coming alive by being read out of a book. I have never heard of a plotline quite like this one. I love it's originality and uniqueness. Something that bothered me about this book was the synopsis. I found that is really could have been a spoiler to the story because what you read in the synopsis does not really happen in the book. Readers get a vague description of it, and it also made me think about how a prequel would be beneficiary to this series. I know I would definitely read it if it were to ever be written. I also really loved the world that was built here even though it is just modern day, the other fairy tale elements really jazzed it up and made it exciting.

The characters in this book were brilliant, a lot to love and a lot to hate. I can really see them developing a lot throughout the series and I hope to see some of them become a bit stronger. I felt like Dustfinger, who is one of my favorite characters, was not as strong as I would I have liked him to be. I can picture him as a total hero if he showed a little more strength. So I am hoping he develops more throughout the series. I also enjoy Meggie a lot. I can see her as a hero also and I find that she is a very strong character. She is easy to relate to even though she is only 12 she uses her fear to strengthen her. One small thing that bothered me about Meggie was that she called her dad Mo instead of Dad. That was a little annoying to me. Most of these characters are very believable and I loved that.

I recommend this book to anyone who likes something a little different, a YA novel with a little fantasy, a little mystery and a lot of other great elements. Even if you are not huge on either of those genres, I think you could enjoy this book. I am looking forward to the rest of the series with Inkspell and Inkdeath.