Willowmere by Andrea Cox Christen reminded me a little bit of the 100 Cupboards series by N.D. Wilson. It tells the story of Pea, a young girl who recently lost her mother to an accident. While trimming a tree with her dad, Pea finds a necklace hidden in the branches. On it is written the words, “To Pea, Love Mom.”

This necklace opens Pea to a whole new world: the world of Willowmere, created by Mom out of her imagination. But Willowmere is in trouble. With the death of its creator, Willowmere is beginning to rot, and everything inside it – nature, creatures, people – are being transformed into monstrous parodies of themselves. To save Willowmere, Pea must join forces with Renault, a monkey-lemur-dog she knows from Mom’s stories, and a mysterious girl named Laur who claims to have known Pea’s Mom just as well as Pea herself did. Together the three of them must battle bone walkers, confront moving trees, and face the darkest danger in a transforming castle in order to defeat the rot that’s taken over the world and restore Willowmere to a place of imagination and beauty.

I started off really liking this book, but about a third of the way through it rapidly shifted into a story that focused on action and not on character development. Every chapter seemed to have the characters in danger and facing life or death situations with hardly a pause for breath. Overall, the book was all right . The characters are fun, if a little predictable, and the concept of Willowmere is intriguing. I would have preferred a little less action, though, and a bit more character development and believable emotion. The characters often feel a certain way (e.g. sad, upset, worried) and then the emotion evaporates the next minute and you’d never think they were affected at all. I think this was a fun, quick read with some dark scenes involving monsters and graphic imagery, and it would appeal to readers who love fast-moving stories, like the Maximum Ride books by James Patterson.

Review of an Advanced Reader’s Copy from Chicken Scratch Books

Content Analysis:

Profanity/Language: None

Violence/Gore: Many instances of violence and gore, including but not limited to characters being in danger of injury and/or death multiple times from monstrous creatures and warped nature; a character is afraid of thunderstorms; a character often has flashbacks/memories of a parent’s death; characters are frequently chased by monsters; a character is caught by a “bone walker” and thrown into a dark place where she loses consciousness; a character wakens in pain; two characters escape creature and a third character manages to “break” the creature; a character almost dies trying to cross a rickety bridge that breaks apart under her; characters are in danger trying to pass through a forest that shifts around, sending trees and logs careening at them; two characters are antagonistic and frequently argue and fight with each other; a furry creature gets stuck in spider webs and hurts himself getting free; a character is attacked by a grey fog; characters have to work together to stop a magic world from rotting away; characters see people attacked and swallowed up by a warping castle; characters are transformed into monstrous “stretched-out” people; a monstrous human breaks into a room and characters escape through an attic; two characters are captured by stretched-out people; a character is attacked by a castle and trapped in the floor, and the stones start to creep up her legs, causing pain; a character escapes being trapped by stone but can hardly walk due to pain; a diseased magical tree creates a frightening thunderstorm, sending out lightning strikes and traumatizing a character who has to crawl toward it to rescue her friends who are trapped under its branches; characters are grabbed by tree roots and dragged underground; characters are attacked by thorn bushes and a character sacrifices himself so his friends can escape; characters are picked up by an angry tree; a character tells the tree a story of past sorrows and wrongs which at first makes the tree react violently.

Sex/Nudity: A girl is upset to hear a character claim to be another daughter of her mother.

Mature Subject Matter:

Death of a family member.

Alcohol/Drug Use:

None