futurista

This was a very disappointing book. I expected more of a ghost story and less of a story about a boy who hates his stepfather.

Here's the book in a nutshell:
Mark moves with his sick mother and hated stepfather to a coastal town south of London. Mark really hates his step father. For some reason, the boy doesn't have to go to school because he's not in London, so he attempts to learn to skateboard. They order out Chinese a lot, and Mark spends lots of time hating his stepfather. And somewhere in the middle of all that hating of his stepfather, the boy meets an old lady who lives downstairs. While she's sleeping, the boy lets himself into the old servants' quarters where he thinks he sees the servants' ghosts come to life. About 5 pages out of 200 are devoted to Mark meeting the servant ghosts and them telling him he doesn't belong downstairs with them. The other 195 pages are devoted to stepfather hate.

Perhaps the ghostly servants were supposed to be symbolic of something? But frankly I'm at a loss as to what they're supposed to symbolize. Maybe I need to be an 11-year-old boy to appreciate this book, but I frankly think an 11-year-old boy would be more bored with this book than I was.

Note: While I critique both purchased and free books in the same way, I'm legally obligated to tell you I received this book free through the Amazon Vine program in return for my review. Blah blah blah.