2015 Reading Challenge [Closed] discussion

I decided to pick a book from my TBR list that had the lowest rating. This is a book that I purchased for my daughter. She has not read it yet, so I thought I will read it first. If I like it then I will recommend it to her.

This is the synopsis from the goodreads site.
he Valorim are about to fall to a dark lord when they send a necklace containing their planet across the cosmos, hurtling past a trillion starsall the way into the lunchbox of Tommy Pepper, sixth grader, of Plymouth, Mass. Mourning his late mother, Tommy doesn't notice much about the chain he found, but soon he is drawing the twin suns and humming the music of a hanorah. As Tommy absorbs the art and language of the Valorim, their enemies target him. When a creature begins ransacking Plymouth in search of the chain, Tommy learns he must protect his family from villains far worse than he's ever imagined

Most of the bad reviews complain about the book alternating between earth and another world. The ones who liked the book mention that they have read Schmidt's other books and enjoyed them.

This was a ho-hum read for me. It is a children/young adult book, so the lack of depth is understandable. It was about a family dealing with grief and the other world was supposed to show the range of emotions that a person goes through when experiencing that grief.
I felt that the book could have dealt with the subject matter in more depth, or showed the connection with more emotion. It came across as a very lack luster read.