I picked this one up in my Waterstones Haul. I was supposed to read this at the beginning of books 11-20 but below you will see why I didn’t.

Synopsis (as taken from Amazon):

Kay felt everything change in the room around her.

Everything.

Kay’s father is working late – as usual. Fed up, her mother bundles Kay and her sister into the car, and drives to his Cambridge college to collect him.

But, the staff say nobody by his name has ever worked there.

When they return home, Kay discovers a card left on her pillow:

Will O. de Wisp, Gent. F.H.S.P and Phillip R. T. Gibbet, Gent. F.H.S.P. K.Bith. REMOVALS.

That night, Kay is woken by voices at her window: the voices of Will and Phillip, the Removers. But they are not human. And Kay shouldn’t be able to see them. Except she can…

Ability to read – I really struggled with this book. At one point I didn’t even think I would read it to the end. This book was in the 9-12 section at Waterstones so I thought I would have no trouble reading it but the language and structure of this book really messed with my ability to process and my dyslexic issues. I honestly struggled to make heads or tails of it and kept having to take breaks between reading to (A) understand what was happening and (B) stop myself from throwing the book at my wall. I would have suggested that the target audience of this book should be a little higher because of the complex language used. I struggled even more to read this because of the above issues and it became a challenge to read properly and not skim-read.

That is not to say that you wouldn’t enjoy reading it (it is just my experience of the book.)

Characterisation – Kay shows determination and strength as she takes on a twelve night adventure. Eloise showed that young innocence and irritability that comes from being a younger sibling and the connection between the two was lovely.

Visualisation – The bits that I found easiest to visualise were the parts of the story written on the black pages. The mystery of these pages fuelled my curiosity and I found the language to be less complex here and easier to understand.

Problems – The plot is quite slow, it is not a thrilling adventure that is action paced. It is slow and steady. I thought the plot was just a great idea but I just couldn’t get behind it. Regardless of my problems with my ability to read this, the strong start could not make up for the slowness that continued on.

Hannah xoxo