THE STARS OF WHISTLING RIDGE - Cindy Baldwin



Ivy Mae Bloom's goal is to find her 'forever home.' At thirteen (well, almost thirteen), Ivy wishes the magic of a place to settle on her and her mom so that they can stop the constant moving.  Ivy's mother is a fallen star who travels the globe to fix the magic that surrounds everything. Even magic needs repairing now and then.

But Ivy steals her mother's supply of 'wish jars' and now the Blooms are stuck in Whistling Ridge, North Carolina.  It's not such a bad little town, Ivy decides, and hopes beyond everything that this can be her forever home.

There's something going on in Whistling Ridge, though. Even Ivy can feel the magic draining away and her mother seems powerless to fix it. With some new friends and acquaintances, Ivy believes she might know what the problem is and how to solve it, but if the magic is restored, will her mother move them along again?

This book is incredibly poetic. Author Cindy Baldwin's prose is lyrical and she makes it easy to be drawn in to the book. I didn't pick up on the magic right away (a little more on that in a moment) and the subtlety of magic in a very real world added to the beauty of the story.

I received an advanced digital audio copy of this book.  This is different from a regular audio book. In a regular audio book, a narrator reads the story with added inflections and pauses and sometimes different voices for the different characters.  But this advance audio book uses a 'synthetic voice.' It's a bit strange, listening to something that sounds real but emotionless, and it definitely took me out of the book early on, which is why I may have missed the early introduction of magic in the story.

The character of Ivy is really well developed.  She's strong (for her age), with just the right amount of youthful inexperience.  She could easily become whiny, but she's not, and she could easily be made almost super-heroic, but she is not.

Given that this particular audio did not really support the book, and yet I still found it easy to enjoy, I will look forward to picking up the physical book and/or the true audio edition.

Looking for a good book? Do your middle-grade/young adult readers a favor and put a copy of The Stars of Whistling Ridge by Cindy Baldwin in their hands.

I received a synthetic voice audio edition of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars

* * * * * *

The Stars of Whistling Ridge

author: Cindy Baldwin

publisher: Quill Tree Books

ISBN: 0063006413

hardcover, 400 pages
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MURDLE VOLUME 1 - G. T. Karber

Image
 I enjoy puzzles of many different varieties. I had not heard of 'Murdle' before this but essentially this is a combination of the game of Clue and a Sherlock Holmes micro story. With suspects, possible murder weapons, potential locations, and/or motives plus some very brief hints, readers are meant to combine the logic of what's know with deductive reasoning to identify the killer (or killers?) in 100 different mystery word puzzles. I will admit right off the bat that I did not do all 100.  I didn't even do half of these, but I did so some random sampling through all the categories (Elementary, Occult Medium, Hard Boiled, and Impossible). I did not get any correct in the Impossible category (of course not ... they were impossible!) and only one correct in the Hard Boiled (of five). The Elementary puzzles were, as expected, pretty easy and the Hard Boiled only a little bit more difficult. Each mini mystery comes with a grid printed in the book to help the reader-detecti
Read more

THE YOUNGER GODS - Michael R. Underwood

Image
 Jacob Greene is a child of cultists - extremists with a deep connection to powerful gods.  To stay in good favor and receive great powers from these gods Jacob's family (both biological family and cult group family) must occasion a sacrifice now then. Jacob doesn't seem to question this (it's how he's been raised, after all) until the time he brings his best friend home to be brutally sacrificed. Jacob believes that his friend is a willing participant, honored to be chosen, informed of what was about to take place by Jacob's father.   Of course nothing could be further from the truth and the friend does NOT go willingly. This shatters Jacob's belief and has him question his faith and he leaves his family and cult in order to think things through. But it's not easy to escape powerful gods, and despite being in the city of New York, all signs point to the fact that the gods know where he is and that something big is about to go down. Although the description
Read more

THE RAVEN THIEF - Gigi Pandian

Image
 With Tempest Raj now a member of the company, Secret Staircase Construction (a company who, as their title suggests, builds mystery-themed, secret rooms inside homes) has finished their first job. Their client now wants to celebrate to kick off her new beginning - new home and new life now that she's divorced from her cheating ex-husband, famous mystery author Corbin Colt. First up, a mock séance to remove any trace of Corbin from the property, led by Tempest's friend, Sanjay.   But during that séance, while all those gathered sat in a dark room holding hands, Corbin's dead body crashes the party, falling across the table in front of everyone. There were eight people in the room, and they were all holding hands, but all the evidence points to one of them being the murderer.  Suspicions point to Ash, Tempest's grandfather, because he was the only one with Corbin's blood on him. Of course, as a doctor, he was also the only one who checked on the body - wherein he acq
Read more