Play Book Tag discussion

I'm pretty sure I read this book a long time ago. This time through, I liked it well enough, but I didn't love it. This is the story of the Mortmain family as told by Cassandra. The Mortmains's are poor and live in Suffolk castle, which is falling down around their feet. The father wrote a famous book, but has lost his mojo. Cassandra's older sister is Rose is very tired of being poor and sets her sights on a rich neighbor, but unfortunately Cassandra also has 'calf' love for the same man.

The side characters were very vivid and Cassandra is quite charming. The narrative is told through Cassandra's journal entries. Because of this set-up, the book has an episodic feel because the focus would be on a set of events and then things would skip ahead to another incident. In some cases, there was not a lot of closure around the events --- which on this read through bothered me a bit. I do think it is a nice charming story for a teen who hasn't been jaded by all the dystopian, or fantasy YA fare.

I read this book for the first time ever this year. I was utterly charmed by it. Especially the part about the bear. I still giggle thinking about it.