Maimoona Yamani Yamani itibaren Balaban, 35700 Balaban/Bergama/İzmir, Turkey itibaren Balaban, 35700 Balaban/Bergama/İzmir, Turkey

A perfectly charming and hilarious middle grade read, with voice out the wazoo and a startlingly compelling mystery, to boot! I have my ideas about what the "mysterious howling" is (not to mention where the Incorrigibles came from, and Penelope Lumley's origins), but fortunately I can skip right to book two and continue reading! One of the advantages of coming to a series late in the game. ;) P.S. Cassiopeia Incorrigible might just be the cutest thing ever.

If I could, I'd give this a firm 3 & 1/2 stars because I'm not sure I loved it but I more than liked it. I like/love most of her books. I like fairy tales and this book was full of fairy tale references - the story itself is really a fairy tale. It is short and it is a quick read. I had great trouble warming to most of the main characters but this was meant to be. The last pages made me cry because, in the end, I really felt for those same characters. Any book that elicits tears deserves, I've decided, the full 4 stars. One small problem I had with the copy I read - someone made the bad decision to put a review on the cover that included the comment "An electrifying novel" .... a great deal of the story involves survivers of lightning strikes so this was either a very bad joke or it was not intentional - someone at the publishers should have caught this because bad joke or unintentional, it was wrong.