Review: The Frights of Fiji

The Frights of Fiji by Sunayna Prasad
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’m sorry to give such a negative review, but I really didn’t enjoy this book. I’m an adult, rather than of middle grade age, but I have read many MG books and really enjoyed them (Stephanie Burgis, for example).

The language used in this story is really odd, almost as though it has been translated from another language. For example, people were frequently “bending” their eyebrows - both for (presumably) surprise/enquiry and when they might have been frowning.

Emotions are never referenced. The physical manifestations of emotions (sighs etc) are described. The whole book reads almost as an official report of some kind, everything feels at a distance, it’s impossible to feel involved in the story. The writing comes across as very stiff. There were also excessive quantities of description of food, clothing, detailing routine tasks, mentioning the number of minutes things took.

The heroine was described as “inhaling and exhaling” more than once - I assume that all the characters are doing this throughout or they would die? Also, at one point, her heart “palpitated all over her body”, which did make me laugh, and wonder if this is meant to be a parody?

To me, the magic didn’t seem to hang together and make any kind of logical sense. All the technology is just a magical version of an iPhone etc. Far too much info-dumping on how things worked, without really explaining it. Suspension of disbelief would have been a lot easier if the writing hadn’t been so stiff over all, I might have got caught up in the adventure.

I found the heroine a little odd too - she didn’t seem upset by either her aunt dying (though she seemed to believe that it was her fault even though her aunt should have been a lot more careful), or her uncle losing his memory, having to kill multiple people, having to leave all her friends and move in with someone she didn’t know well. In fact the emotional reactions of pretty much everyone seemed off.

Good things - I don’t recall even a single use of an incorrect apostrophe. Places were very well described, sometimes in almost too much detail. Child actually telling adults about the weird magic that is going on is a nice change too.

Definitely not a book I’d recommend. It only gets 2 stars because I’m rounding up, and for the premise, which is good.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

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