The Isle of the Lost

The Isle of the Lost

Melissa De La Cruz

Genre: YA Fairy Tale Style

Grade: B

I’m a sucker for a story about the children of fairy tale characters. This one sticks all the evil fairy tale characters on a domed island where there’s no magic and forces them to basically be evil to each other. Which without magic comes off more as being bad parents and really shitty neighbors.

The four man kids are; Mal (daughter of Maleficent), her archenemy Evie (daughter of the Evil Queen), Jay (son of Jafar) and Carlos (son of Cruella de Vil) who has a fear of dogs. They join up to go on an adventure and find Maleficents’s lost magic when they believe a speck of magic might have returned to the island. You pretty much know how this is going to go. Meaning of friendship, teamwork, spirit and not as bad as the parents and all that.

I did appreciate that they never backed down on the parent’s attitudes and kept them pretty true to how you’d imagine the original characters would be in that situation. You also get little glimpses of happy fairy tale land where the secondary characters are going on a bit of a strike that doesn’t really go anywhere.

Despite it being so obvious it was also really entertaining. The author writes the kids and the back and forth between them really well. It felt like watching one of the better episodes of Once Upon a Time. I liked them all and enjoyed spending time with them even if I did know what was going to happen.

Now there’s also the Prince- son of Beast and Belle- over on the mainland who spends most of the book coming to some sort of epiphany. The fact that he’s only just had it at the end made me think this was going to be a series but unfortunately not… it’s going to be a Disney Family movie sometime this summer. You can check out the preview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4UUQqefajc

No offense to the people involved with the movie but I think I would have rather had a second book.

Recommend: The book? Yes. It’s a lot of fun. It’s quick and entertaining. I don’t know however if I’ll be watching the movie.