snark (reading) lady

If you were to take a fairy tale, a Tim Burton movie, a few romance shavings and a scoop of action adventure, you would essentially have a good idea of what's in this book. I found "Puppet Parade" through Goodreads, and knowing nothing more than what I read on this site's blurb, I dove in and never regretted it once. Puppet Parade was not without faults, but it was full of charm. In a story that has such a great action propelled plot, the characters really stood out. Oliver, the puppeteer who has chosen to seclude himself from people. Sophie, the stepchild who has never seen her own face. 10 puppets, each true to the silly names they were given. And if that weren't enough, the towns that populate the magical world Oliver and Sophie stumble upon are aristocrats, magicians, entertainers and more. Alayan presents this wonderful cast of characters, and does a good job taking us along on their journey. They grow, change and ultimately find the things they were looking for. There were two main things that stood out to me as amazing: the title of the book, how as you delve deeper into the story it takes on different meanings, and the moment I realized that there was even more to the story than a puppeteer searching for his runaway creations. The explanation came just as I was questioning the world Sophie and Oliver were wandering in. The low points for me were these: there were a few mistakes throughout the text. They aren't major things, but I caught a few of them and that is always a little disheartening. The very, very end of the book seemed out of place. For the most part, we'd journeyed with this action-filled book, but the end was exposited. It almost felt like an info dump. As much as I appreciated the resolution, I wish it would've been handled a little more deftly. And there is the line I'm ultimately straddling here. It was a wonderful book, but it wasn't the best writing, you know? In a story that could've had so many more rich descriptions, I found that even the descriptions we did get lacked art. As impressed as I was by the characters and concept, there were times I imagined what this could've been in the hands of a more seasoned author. That isn't entirely fair to Zeinab Alayan, however, who produced a very good debut and deserves to have others discover her work. As I briefly mentioned in the beginning, this book really made me think of Tim Burton. Any chance we could get him on the movie version? No? No? No?