Novel Review; Far Far Away
My Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Goodreads Summary: It says quite a lot about Jeremy Johnson Johnson that the strangest thing about him isn't even the fact his mother and father both had the same last name. Jeremy once admitted he's able to hear voices, and the townspeople of Never Better have treated him like an outsider since. After his mother left, his father became a recluse, and it's been up to Jeremy to support the family. But it hasn't been up to Jeremy alone. The truth is, Jeremy can hear voices. Or, specifically, one voice: the voice of the ghost of Jacob Grimm, one half of the infamous writing duo, The Brothers Grimm. Jacob watches over Jeremy, protecting him from an unknown dark evil whispered about in the space between this world and the next. But when the provocative local girl Ginger Boultinghouse takes an interest in Jeremy (and his unique abilities), a grim chain of events is put into motion. And as anyone familiar with the Grimm Brothers know, not all fairy tales have happy endings...
As some of you may know, I am part of the Battle of the Books club at Middle College and the only reason I ended up reading this book this year was because it fell on that list of 20 books. Thus, while it is typically associated as a middle grade novel, I found it to be extremely interesting and unique.
The writing was eloquent and rather sophisticated to be for a middle grade book; in fact that is what captivated me for the first few chapters. Jacob Grimm, the ghost/voice that watches over Jeremy has such an interesting voice and story throughout the novel that it kept most of my interest over the general plot... at least until the good part. While the story follows Jeremy Johnson Johnson and Ginger Boultinghouse, there are so many more factors in this novel than the generic boy meets girl dynamic.
For example, the town is recently experiencing missing persons; however, all of them go unnoticed because it is common. Jeremy's mother was one to go and thus left his father sitting at home, watching tv and eating microwaved dinners. Now the two book bookstore that belonged to Jeremy's grandfather, now owned by his father, is obviously going out of business and Jeremy and his father risk being evicted.
There are several plot lines this novel follows but they all center around Jeremy and are rather easy to follow. The novel in itself is a cute and wonderful read for both middle grade and high school readers; I found it very endearing and loved the Brothers Grimm/fairy tale aspect being thrown in.
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