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A review by mikaiten
Catch Your Death by Lauren Child
1.0
I received this book as an ARC from Random House, and since I've been meaning to check out the Ruby Redfort series for a while, I figured it was a sign. I have never read the Clarice Bean books by Lauren Child, but from what I understand, Clarice reads the Ruby Redford books all the time in her books. It was this meta-fiction aspect that made me interested in the first place.
In this book Ruby is trying to learn survival skills as part of her secret agent training, but can't seem to stop overthinking things. She knows all the rules by heart, but when it comes to using her instincts to survive, she just can't do it. Additionally, some very weird things are going on in town, all having to do with a rare perfume that everyone seems to be talking about.
Since this is my first time reading this series, I was very surprised by how grown up the main characters seem. Both Ruby and her friend Clancy come across as being far more mature than what I would have expected from a middle grade series. It doesn't help that the adults in the book often come across as the exact opposite. They are the ones who care about things that don't really matter, and it's up to Ruby to save the day. Her mom is concerned about being invited to a party where this new perfume will be unveiled, meanwhile, her child has been missing school, gets horribly sick, and disappears for days on end.
In total honesty, I didn't read the entire book. There seemed to be a lot of uninteresting stuff in the middle about bikes and other nonsense, so after reading about 120 pages I just skipped to the last few chapters to see what happened. I don't feel like I missed a lot. I still know what happened, and got to read the parts that were actually important to the plot. I find it really disappointing that so much of the book was filler. I don't know many kids who would continue reading such a long book with a plot that moves so slowly. Perhaps the infrequent clues and puzzles might be entertaining to some, but I've seen similar books that engage the reader throughout and further the plot without losing their readers.
In this book Ruby is trying to learn survival skills as part of her secret agent training, but can't seem to stop overthinking things. She knows all the rules by heart, but when it comes to using her instincts to survive, she just can't do it. Additionally, some very weird things are going on in town, all having to do with a rare perfume that everyone seems to be talking about.
Since this is my first time reading this series, I was very surprised by how grown up the main characters seem. Both Ruby and her friend Clancy come across as being far more mature than what I would have expected from a middle grade series. It doesn't help that the adults in the book often come across as the exact opposite. They are the ones who care about things that don't really matter, and it's up to Ruby to save the day. Her mom is concerned about being invited to a party where this new perfume will be unveiled, meanwhile, her child has been missing school, gets horribly sick, and disappears for days on end.
In total honesty, I didn't read the entire book. There seemed to be a lot of uninteresting stuff in the middle about bikes and other nonsense, so after reading about 120 pages I just skipped to the last few chapters to see what happened. I don't feel like I missed a lot. I still know what happened, and got to read the parts that were actually important to the plot. I find it really disappointing that so much of the book was filler. I don't know many kids who would continue reading such a long book with a plot that moves so slowly. Perhaps the infrequent clues and puzzles might be entertaining to some, but I've seen similar books that engage the reader throughout and further the plot without losing their readers.