Middle Grade Madness! discussion

The first month and book in our Keeper of the Lost Cities readathon! It's quite a long book and long series so it's going to be a commitment and I hope I like the first book enough to want to read more!

Have you read this book before? Did you enjoy it? Is this going to be your first time reading it like me?

Spoiler rules:
Please remember to hide all spoilers in spoiler tags!

It will be my first time! I've heard a lot of good things about it on YouTube and there seems to be a really passionate (in a good way) debate within the fandom on which characters to ship. I hope we all enjoy it. Looking forward to future discussions!

@Spencer I’ve heard good things about the beginning of the series but then bad things about the end few books so I’m a little worried about that... we’ll face that bridge when we come to it I guess! I just wish the books weren’t so long because I find it quite daunting, I’ll just have to try and power through...

I read the first book earlier this year and really enjoyed it! Looking forward to continue on with the series in 2021 :)

I’m so excited about these!! These books have been on my radar for so long. It’s already available in my library so I’ll check it out the minute January starts!

@Sandra aaw I’m sorry you have to wait till February to join in but you can still discuss the first book with us in January if you like! Plus there’s other events going on in Jan I’ll be sending a message out about them tomorrow...

@Ilsen you’re well prepared👏🏻 My library doesn’t have any of the keeper of the Lost Cities books which is surprising because they’re popular so I guess I’ll be reading it as an ebook then!

I love this series. There are some things that I don't love as much, but overall a great series. The only one I didn't particularly like was Book 7 but I know many people who love it. Quite a long series with a lot of pages but worth it in my opinion.

Hi! I'm new to this group and I was really really excited when I saw the KotLC read a thon this year! KotLC is my favorite series of all time, so I'll definitely take this chance to reread the books :)

Hi! I’m new to the group, and I’m sure this group is amazing if we’re reading KotLC! KotLC is my favorite book series! I’m read every single book multiple times and my book club is currently reading it. I’d love to read it again and hear other people’s thoughts on it. (Watch out for Shannon Messenger’s cliffhangers!)

Omg we have 2 Bellas!😂 How will I address you both in the same message?!

It seems like a lot of people are here to reread the series with us or are joining in in February! I love that. Rereading can be so much fun when it's been a long time since you first read it and it's always so interesting to see what your thoughts are on the book the second time round and how maybe your opinions might have changed... Looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts! I can't believe I have to wait 11 days to start this one😩

Will try to get hold of the book

Well, I just reread the books last month, but hey! You can never reread a series too many times (or can you?). Super excited to hear what everyone thinks of this series!

@Virginia I usually don't like rereading unless I reeeeally love the book or it's been so long since I last read it that I basically can't remember any of it anymore.

Has everyone who is reading along got their copy ready? Only 2 days to go!

I do! I started a little bit early but that's because I'm joining so many readathons next year. :)

I have all the books in this series, but haven't read any yet! Maybe it's a good time to start!!!

@Spencer that’s totally ok! January is looking like a busy month for books for lots of us!

@Megs this is the perfect opportunity to read it! Join in with us😊 I’m thinking I might read it towards the end of the month so I can build up some hype for myself before I read it😂

I just got the first book in the series from the library today. It took 2 weeks for it to come in, but now I'm ready to go.

@Lynn you're lucky to get it in the library! It's a super popular series yet my library only offers an ebook version which is sad so I'm reading it as an ebook not a physical copy.

Ok so, I think this book feels a little too young for me? I'm about a third of the way in and I'm not the biggest fan of the writing style. Perhaps it "ages" more as the series progresses? The story is quite interesting though and the world-building is decent, but at this point, I'm not sure I'm invested enough to continue the rest of the series. Oh no!

Kadi wrote: "@Lynn you're lucky to get it in the library! It's a super popular series yet my library only offers an ebook version which is sad so I'm reading it as an ebook not a physical copy."

I haven't started reading yet, but for some reason, the library sent me the illustrated/annotated edition. There are so many annotations in the margins; it's going to be an interesting read.

@Spencer I think I read somewhere a few weeks ago that this series is like Harry Potter in the sense that as the books go on they characters get older and so does the writing style. But I might be remembering that wrong. Also maybe give it some more time and see how you feel when you get half way through. It might grow on you more. I'm really finding it scary how big this book is. And the next book is even bigger!

@Lynn wow that's awesome I didn't know an annotated edition even existed. That's definitely going to make for an even more interesting reading experience.

I'm a little more than halfway through the book, and I'm really enjoying the annotations. She includes inspirations for characters and scenes as well as decisions for why something is included or changed from an original version. I haven't read them yet, but at the end of the book, there are some deleted scenes with explanations.

@Kadi Yes it definitely does get more of a young adult vibe as you progress through the series. I probably am going to start the book tonight. Hopefully It's as good as I remember it!

Okay, I'm halfway through and it's starting to grow on me. (view spoiler)[Who knew that I'm into childish romances? I'm starting to get why the KotLC fandom is crazy about which character to ship with the MC. Right now, I'm on Team Keefe! (hide spoiler)] But I'm curious what the others who have read this think.

Yes, the book series is really good. I do also ship Team keefe, but I ship SoFitz and Sodex to!

I liked the book more as I went along. By the end it had separated itself from Harry Potter. I liked it so much more than I thought I would when I started reading. The only problem I had with the book was the seeming ease that she was able to leave her original family. The author kept as much as she could grounded in reality, and that always makes fantasy books more enjoyable for me.

@Lynn, Yes, I totally agree. I've read the series a few times before, and it definitely gets better (at least in the first book) as it goes along.

So, I just finished book 1! I thought it was a really great book, and it definitely got better as I went along. Although, I have read this book a lot, and each time it keeps getting better!

@Virginia it's awesome to hear that it gets better each time and you don't get tired of it. I'm going to be starting this sooon. I just started another book yesterday and have one more planned after that but it's a short one so I'll start this one in like a week? Then we'll see how I find it!

It’s just been announced that Ben Affleck will be directing the Keeper of the Lost Cities movie for Disney (source: https://variety.com/2021/film/news/be... )
How are we feeling about that?
I haven’t seen Ben Affleck direct anything fun... isn’t this book supposed to be fun? I’ve assumed so because it’s Middle Grade but I haven’t read it yet so I could be wrong. If it’s more of a serious or emotional adventure then maybe he’s a good choice for director!

I saw that! I'm super excited for a movie, although I really hope that they won't do a terrible job casting and making sure that the movie stays fairly close with the plot of the series. This is also a big deal for the author, because Disney is one of the bigger movie companies.

@Vitginia After what Disney just did with the Artemis fowl movie I would say be extremely sceptical😂 gosh that movie was a full blown mess. Maybe netflix should’ve been given the movie rights instead. They’ve definitely done enough book to movie adaptations. Enola Homes was a roaring success! But then again A Letter for the King was not good😬 overall I have more faith in Netflix. Disney doesn’t do young book adaptations well. Maybe having Ben Affleck as director will change that but I don’t know, how many young book adaptation movies has he directed? I’m worried he’ll make it overly dark or just completely miss the mark on the tone of the movie. Or maybe it’ll be amazing, who knows! We’ll have to wait and see what happens with the casting announcements in the future

Kadi wrote: "@Vitginia After what Disney just did with the Artemis fowl movie I would say be extremely sceptical😂 gosh that movie was a full blown mess. Maybe netflix should’ve been given the movie rights inste..."

I saw that announcement too. Affleck is a very good director, but I don't believe he has done any MG or YA at all. To me, that is the biggest worry. He has done some book adaptations (Gone Baby Gone). The good news is that with his name attached, there should be quality casting.

@Lynn Reading this now the casting is absolutely everything. Because if it fails, the "romances" in the book will just be downright cheesy.

And yeah @Kadi I haven't even read the Artemis Fowl books yet but the movie was HORRIBLE which says a lot because I'm not nitpicky when it comes to movies.

@Lynn I watched Gone Baby Gone years ago. I can’t remember much about it but I know I liked the end.

@Spencer I’ve read the books and I couldn’t even stand to watch the movie. I knew from the teaser trailer they released months beforehand that it was going to be terrible because they changed a character’s entire gender and so much about the storyline. Not to mention bad casting for the kid who played Artemis. It just came off as amateurish for such a big book series and movie company to make this sucky movie.

Kadi wrote: "@Lynn I watched Gone Baby Gone years ago. I can’t remember much about it but I know I liked the end.

@Spencer I’ve read the books and I couldn’t even stand to watch the movie. I knew from the teas..."

He's done some good ones. The Town, Argo (Oscar - Best Picture) are both good movies.

@Kadi, yeah, Aretims Fowel was a terrible mess. Another one of their bad ones were the Percy Jackson movies. Although, their call of the wild movie was really good. It was a really good movie, and because I had just finished the book a few days before I saw the movie, I could tell that they tried to get it as acurate as possible.

@Virginia I think the first Percy Jackson movie isn't actually that bad but ONLY if you're not comparing it to the book. Like as a movie on it's own and not an adaptation it's pretty good. But as an adaptation it sorely failed. I have never heard of this Call of the Wild movie. Another one of their terrible mg book to movie adaptations was A Wrinkle in Time which totally bombed at the box office and was a huge mess of a movie

I just finished KotLC and what a ride!! That was fun! Not mind-blowingly good by any means but still fun. (view spoiler)[(I still ship SoKeefe.) (hide spoiler)] I'm definitely reading the next book, hopefully we'll start getting some answers there! But I'll wait until February to start.

@Kadi, yeah, I can see that with Percy Jackson. And the Call of the Wild movie came out in 2019, so its fairly new.

I just finished the first book of this series... Wow!!! It was a great start. Loved the magic system, the world building and the characters. Good choice @Kadi

Just started, and am 25% in! Loving it so far and am glad to be back to Middle Grade. These kinds of books (KotLC, Riordan) just give me an instant feeling of coming home, of comfort, and I have a feeling I'll be struggling to not binge the books! I managed with a 1,5 year long Riordan readalong, though, so I should be fine!

The shipping mentions above don't really make sense to me yet, and I kinda thought it would just be Sophie and Fitz (eventually), so perhaps I'm a bit over-sensitive, but for me personally, as someone who knows absolutely nothing about this series, some spoiler tags would have been nice in regards to actual names as now I'll be waiting for it which is not how I like to read new books- SORRY I know it's not really a spoiler spoiler as in spoiling what happens but also my brain is gonna latch onto this *runs away*

*yells from distance*
Hopefully the new Percy Jackson adaptation will make us forget the original movies ever existed and the Artemis Fowl movie will be magically removed from all of our minds (changing a character's gender doesn't have to be a bad thing, but when it completely erases another character's storyline... that's another thing). Let's hope Ben gets this right!

Anyways, thoughts:

(view spoiler)[This isn't the first book I read where the MC fakes their death/erases them from their family's minds, and STILL I go 'nooooooo'. I think that Sophie is very mature for her age, having had to grow up so fast (I mean, you gotta when you're gonna graduate high school at 12) and so her choice for her family made sense to me. Perhaps it was a bit easier than you'd expect, but I'm also glad it wasn't a whole chapter of her throwing a fit about it, haha!

Loving Fitz so far, and Bronte is a douchebag, to put it mildly. I'm listening to the audio so I am likely to get names wrong, so please feel free to correct me! Aldon is also pretty cool. Basically I like everyone so far, but Bronte.

Sophie is so powerful and I am worried (and excited!) for her. The whole soy bean clearly was that Elvish word and I am anxious to find out what it means and why it affected them all the way it did! (hide spoiler)]

So many questions! If it weren't almost 2:30am I would be continuing, hahaha!

BTW, in regards to the spoilers, if I misunderstood and this is a thread to freely discuss the book without tags, I apologize profusely and will simply avoid until I've finished the book! This is the first time I get to join in on a readalong here so I'm still figuring out how it works.

Sorry about the "spoilers". I guess I've never really seen ship names as spoilers. I view spoilers as more like events in the story from about 15% in onwards. I'll be more sensitive to that for sure!

@Spencer @Carmen I too have a brain that clings to information and won’t let it go when I’m reading a book, which is why I also hate spoilers. But as the ships are super big in the sense that even though I haven’t started reading the book yet I already am aware of shipping names... technically they’re spoilers but I feel like everyone already knows them? You can find them in reviews on the goodreads book entry so easily that it seems more like common knowledge that they exist than spoilers. It’s kinda like hearing about Team Edward and Team Jacob before you start reading Twilight. Or Team Peeta and Team Gale before you read The Hunger Games. Like from the beginning you have a sense that shipping is going to occur. I’d say just be careful not to reveal too many specific details about the ships outside of spoiler tags.

With regards to all other spoilers, it’s pretty obvious to discern what a spoiler is so keep it within the spoiler tags so it’s not spoiled for people who haven’t started yet like me (because I’m so slow😂). As a general rule of thumb I’d say anything that a reader can’t learn from the synopsis of the book that is revealing about a character or event that’ll occur is a spoiler. Like just saying that KoTLC takes place in a magical land isn’t a spoiler because we know that much from the synopsis but the fact that Sophie is (I’m making it up now) sent a letter from Hogwarts would be a spoiler. Terrible example. Hope it actually helped explain if anyone’s confused about what constitutes a spoiler! If you have any more questions feel free to ask away😊

Also in the future when we read the next books in the series the rules around what needs to be in a spoiler tag are different. So when we read book 2, only book 2 spoilers need to be hidden in tags and all book 1 spoilers don’t need to be hidden because we’re assuming that anyone on the book 2 discussion page has read book 1 (or else what are they doing there🤔😂). That’s the rule for all sequel book discussion pages. If you’re ever unsure check the first message at the top and I usually specify what the spoiler rules are there.

Wow I wrote an essay😂

@Sameeksha I’m glad you loved it! Also I wish I could take all credit for myself, alas, it belongs entirely to the group members who came out in full force to vote for it as the series they wanted to read in 2021. I was actually quite sceptical of the series and kinda still am because of how long it is but that’s because I have commitment issues😂 it’s great to hear that you liked it and a lot of others do too, each person fills me with more confidence that I’m going to like it if I actually get round to reading it this month. EVERYBODY CROSS YOUR FINGERS! There’s no way I’m not going to read this book! It’s like my New Years resolution to take part in as many of the group events that I can and if I miss this one then I’ll miss every book each month so I can’t let that happen!

Honestly I live under a rock in that sense and don’t read reviews before starting a book so I was 100% unaware 😂

Anyways thanks for not chewing me out 😅

I also hope you’ll get to it because so far I am truly loving it and even though I’m listening to it on audio, it seems like a very easy and quick read regardless of the pages!

@Carmen I always check the ratings of people whose reviews I trust before I even add a book to my TBR so I can get a general idea of what everyone else thought of it because imagine I put all the time and effort into reading a terrible book and then when I go to review it I realise I could've saved myself all that time and effort if I'd seen their reviews beforehand and known the book wasn't worth my time! I don't fully read people's reviews though because I like to be as unbiased as possible. Lol I sound self-contradictory😂 But that really is the method to my reading madness!

Oh, I would never! You seem very nice and I wouldn't be mean ever on the group, I'm literally so grateful for people even being here, how could I be mad at anyone?

The Trials of Morrigan Crow was quite the same, it was a long book (not as long as Keeper of the Lost Cities) but it moved along at a pace that wasn't super slow yet not quite fast. I got through it in just a few days so hopefully it's the same for this book!

Kadi wrote: "@Carmen I always check the ratings of people whose reviews I trust before I even add a book to my TBR so I can get a general idea of what everyone else thought of it because imagine I put all the t..."

Let's hope so! Nevermoor is such a wonderful series, I can't wait to read Hollowpox, though I do hope to reread the first two before doing so!

In other news, I finished Keeper of the Lost Cities!

(view spoiler)[Everyone is SoKeefe apparently so I kinda expected more? There is *nothing* yet so far, and he got introduced with a deep voice and a bad boy attitude. The moment I heard 'deep voice' I was like "Watch it be Keefe". And I was right, haha! I love Keefe, but as a ship not so much. Perhaps later on, but right now the whole shipping thing is a bit awkward anyways given Sophie's age. The age differences aren't a major thing for when she is older, but right now it left me a bit uncomfortable, haha!

My favorite character is Dex by far! I absolutely adore him and when he almost died I was ready to fight. In my buddyread channel I sent: "If Dex had died I would have DNFed, walked away, and never looked back". *shrugs* What can I say? xD

And my least favorite Bronte, but I'm pretty sure that's the point, haha! I am so suspicious of him you have no idea. I am suspicious of almost anyone at this point, to be honest xD Also, he just pronounced he would fail Sophie at her exam, in front of *everyone* and no one is gonna do or say something about that?? That's just wrong.

Sophie is awesome and I love her. And all the animals! Having her be able to be *that* controlling over animals, though.. I hope that doesn't become a recurring thing she does. I had to laugh at 'never' and 'no one's done that before' and 'special'. I'd be rich if I got a euro for each time they said such things, haha! I cannot wait to see the things she'll do and how far she'll go!

My least favorite part was when the drama hit with Adeline and Grady. I felt it wasn't necessary or add anything but drama. Maybe it was to show how grief can affect a person in their actions, but if so, it was way too rushed all over. I don't know, not my favorite part. Also, all (but one) of the mentors giving her 100% made me snort at the predictability of it- true Middle Grade happy ending style xD

OH I also absolutely love the Lost Cities. When can I go? Can I go? Please? (hide spoiler)]

It's almost 2am and I'm tired so my thoughts are insanely jumbled, I'm sorry, but I cannot WAIT for February to continue! I am filled with suspicions and questions and I am excited!

5/5 stars, and an instant absolute favorite!