The Cheap Reader

The characters made this book for me. Stephanie is a smart and strong heroine. Like many other protagonists in “hidden world” books, she is bored with her ordinary life and jumps at the chance to try a new life. I appreciated the fact that she didn’t just magically fit perfectly into this world. She’s surrounded by magical people and she can’t do magic. That’s a big problem when people are trying to kill you. That doesn’t stop her from working on it though. She practices through out the book and she can finally to a teensy bit of magic.Skulduggery was… interesting. I liked his personality and how he and Stephanie got along. Seriously the quick, witty banter between the two of them was the best part of the book. I was a bit weirded out by the fact that he’s a 100+ year old skeleton and he’s hanging out with a 12 year old. That’s weird right? Sure nothing weird went on with them but it was a bit odd.I didn’t enjoy the story as much as I thought I would. I’m always a fan of “hidden world”/save the world books so I should have liked this book. Something just never completely clicked for me. The mythos of the story was a bit too new age-y. Maybe it wasn’t new age-y per se but that’s the vibe I was getting from it. I kind of got in to the habit of skimming over sections where they went into details about the ancient one and the stone. Basically the mythos wasn’t for me but it was done well.The bottom line? I liked the characters but didn’t enjoy the story.