The Incredibly Ordinary Danny Chandelier

The Incredibly Ordinary Danny Chandelier by Laura Trunkey
Danny is an ordinary boy in a family of extraordinary sisters who are all immensely talented at one thing or another. Since Danny is so mediocre, they send him to Lily Brook academy, a school for ordinary people where “being not so good will finally be good enough.” But the school is nothing like how the brochure makes it out to be. Instead of a beautiful school, wonderful teachers, and fun activities, there are hard bunks, disgusting concoctions for dinner, cruel guards, and the “students” are forced to hack away all day at a forest that is alive and seems to want to harm anyone who comes near it. Strange things are going on at Lily Brook, and it seems up to Danny and his friends to find out what.
I enjoyed the magical aspect of this story, it’s a neat idea, but I found it took a long time to get to the part where I was really interested and wanted to find out what the mystery was all about. It seemed to take most of the book to set the stage and then everything was resolved in a few pages, which made it feel unbalanced. Besides that it was a good story if you like mystery, ghosts, and creepy forests.

Mrs. T is now reading: The Frog Princess by E.D. Baker