DNF Review – Stoneheart (Stoneheart, Book 1) by Charlie Fletcher (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Middle Grade
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 464 pages
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN-13: 978-1423101758
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Stoneheart series
Source: Gift
Rating: 3/5 stars

“A city has many lives and layers. London has more than most. Not all the layers are underground, and not all the lives belong to the living.

Twelve-year-old George Chapman is about to find this out the hard way. When, in a tiny act of rebellion, George breaks the head from a stone dragon outside the Natural History Museum, he awakes an ancient power. This power has been dormant for centuries but the results are instant and terrifying: A stone Pterodactyl unpeels from the wall and starts chasing George. He runs for his life but it seems that no one can see what he’s running from. No one, except Edie, who is also trapped in this strange world.

And this is just the beginning as the statues of London awake…

This is a story of statues coming to life; of a struggle between those with souls and those without; of how one boy who has been emotionally abandoned manages to find hope.”

This is the first book in the Stoneheart trilogy. I was really looking forward to reading this book, the premise was very intriguing. However at 150 pages into the story I was still not all that interested or engaged with the story so I decided to stop reading it.

I liked the London setting and enjoyed the idea of all the statues and sculptures coming alive for some epic battle. Unfortunately, I never engaged with any of the characters and still didn’t understand the overall plot or point of the story 150 pages in.

My eleven year old son also tried reading this book before I did. He didn’t make it past the first couple chapters. He said it was creepy and boring and he just didn’t like it.

Overall this was an okay book but really wasn’t for me. While there isn’t anything glaringly wrong with it, neither me or my son thought the story was very good. It was a hard book to engage in.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Goodreads Reading Challenge
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge