Book Review: The Haunting of Charles Dickens

TITLE: The Haunting of Charles Dickens
AUTHOR: Lewis Buzbee
PUBLISHED: 2010
CATEGORY: Childrens
GENRE: Mystery, adventure, historical fiction
PREMISE: Meg's brother Orion has disappeared. In her quest to find him she runs into the famous Charles Dickens and enlists his help.
MY REVIEW: I'm not sure what I was expecting with this book, but I do know I wanted more from it then what I got. It's not a bad book. In fact parts of it are interesting. The author is great at making history come alive, I could easily picture historic London and the tidbits about Dickens himself thrown in there were interesting. I even thought it the aspect of the mystery was decent and a good lesson for children to learn.
But it just fell flat for me for some reason. Part of it was that I didn't care for the stilted writing style. It had a bad habit of telling, not showing. I also frankly was bored with Meg. She had no personality, especially compared with Dickens himself. I think I would have preferred this from Dickens point of view because he was at least interesting. Aside from her brother's disappearance, Meg was just...boring.
So it's not a bad book. It just didn't click for me. However, I do think children will like this book. It's also a good book to read to them if you're introducing Dickens to them. It'll help them understand his contributions a bit more and why his books are important.
WHO SHOULD READ: fans of Charles Dickens, historical fiction fans
MY RATING: Three out of Five top hats

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