Another incredibly lucky day. I don’t know. I was overwhelmed this morning by Emma Hunneyball’s review of Exotics 1:
In Rachael the author De Kenyon has drawn a heroine who is intelligent, brave, fierce and loyal. Rachael is superb: she is an open-minded girl who is able to accept bizarre truths about her existence and the world around her, and uses her new-found knowledge to influence the situations into which she stumbles.
I liked the way that Rachael (who is after all only eight) is unable to deal with the enormity of her mother’s disappearance: she frequently “tries not to think” about it, and states early on that she can’t do anything about it. But when she is pitched into the world of the Exotics Rachael finds she actually can do something about it, and works relentlessly to free her friends and protect her mother’s secrets. Like so many of De’s child-protagonists Rachel is on her own, an outsider making her way in a world of the bizarre, often pitted against adults. De doesn’t write passive characters and Rachael is no exception. She’s faced with the smallest glimmer of hope in an otherwise impossible scenario and not only does she come up fighting but she learns how to win.
I often have a hard time when people say nice things. But this series seems to cut particularly close to home for me, so I have an extra hard time not going looney-happy. I’m a total sap.