Thursday, February 12, 2015

Book Review: Vardin Village by Maggie Spence


Hi everyone! Hope everyone is having a great Thursday! Guess what time it is? It's book review time! I know haven't done these in a while but guess what else? I have a couple of great ones coming up as well! This one in particular, "Vardin Village" by Maggie Spence is a great novel for pre-teen readers, this one is based on a sixteen year old boy (in High School so anybody in that age range is sure to love it! My brother is 13 at the moment and found this book pretty interesting and suspenseful at times. Let's get started! 

I do love the cover of the book, it looks like something out of sketch book.

About The Book

-Book is 305 pages with 33 chapters.
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1494851199
  • ASIN: B00IN9ANZM
  • Language: English
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #166,952 Paid in Kindle Store

Book Description (From Amazon)
Sixteen-year-old, George Vardin, lives in a crappy, ramshackle cottage with no electricity and a roof that’s about to implode. The creaky front porch overlooks the magnificent ancestral mansion that his father lost because of his drug abuse. George is not sure which is more breathtaking; the view or the irony. 

George’s life is about to suck even more because school starts next week and he can’t scrape up enough money to pay his cell phone bill let alone the fee to play varsity football. Uncle Morris shows up and offers a creative solution to keep George and his sister together under one roof. It’s a much larger, less leaky roof, with a breathtaking view of the crappy, ramshackle cottage. Crafty Morris reveals a secret tunnel that leads to the mansion and consequently some Vardin family secrets that will make junior year unforgettable. 



My Review
          In my opinion this book is pretty good but not the best. I am reading this in a 18 year old girl's opinion. I typically love these types of books with realistic fiction but this one was a bit flat even though the back of the book description was pretty engaging, I give the offer props on that one. On the other hand I found that this book would be better suited for younger readers, even aged 9-14 really because the text is large and it can be easily read, not much big vocabulary words in this one. Here is a small part of the back of the book:


George Vardin and his friends are typical teenagers in a small, affluent town. They seek the same goals; to make the varsity team, date a pretty girl, hang with the guys, goof around 'till college. But George can only pretend. He doesn't have the money or the time to play football. George hides the anxiety and the hopeless reality as he waits for his world to crash along with the leaky roof over his dilapidated house...The Vardin family used to be rolling in money but George's grandfather gave the family fortune to the village and George got nothing thanks to his alky parents.

        If you google enough on this book, you can really find out all the juicy details of it even without reading the book. It's almost like movie commercials, they typically show all the good and exciting scenes during commercials and when you actually watch the movie, it really isn't that great. Nevertheless I am not disliking this book but maybe its just more geared toward the younger crowd. It's about a teenager trying to fit in at high school by having the most expensive items, hanging out with friends, being on the sports team (football) and dating the girls. Isn't that what high school was all about? That was my short and simple summary. Basically George doesn't have all of the "resources" and extra spending money to do what his friends are doing, buying and all that so he resorts to "pretending" to live in his great, great, great, great grandfather's house (also named George Vardin) to be more popular.

        Overall personally I wouldn't recommend this book to people of my own age but for the e-book copy of $3, you can't go wrong especially if you have a young reader that loves a bit of mystery, adventure and suspense. I really found this book to be quite different than the typical story, there are scenes that are a bit graphic but it shouldn't be too bad if they're reading books like "Harry Potter", "Percy Jackson" or the "Hunger Games".


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Purchase The Book Here:

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*I received this item complimentary in return for my 100% honest review, all words are my own.*

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