by Rhys A Jones
Title: The Dreables
Author: Rhys A Jones
Publisher: Lucky Bat Books
Book: Standalone
Genre: Children’s/ Middle Grade Fantasy
Found: Amazon Freebies / Kindle Clearout
Rating: 3 Voodoos
Sam Jones’ holiday with Gran is all baking and cats (yawn). But when she gets a cry for help from her old village, everything changes. Something bad is happening and only Gran can fix it. But when she falls victim to a shapeshifter’s trick, Sam is left alone with just dog, cat and cherry bakewells. Things look bleak..But the Dreables haven’t bargained for Gran’s secret gift to Sam. Cunning…
- Goodreads
There’s something really magical about this book. It reminds me of the old stories my grandparents used to read to me as a child but also reminded me of newer books such as the spiderwick chronicles.
The Dreables is a story about the past. Sam Jones hates having to stay with his old Gran, she doesn’t have a colour tv, she’s always forcing him to eat sardines and broccoli and she’s always dragging him out for the day to really boring places like the cat sanctuary or a museum. But what Sam doesn’t know is that his holiday is about to get really strange and really interesting. Gran’s past is about to become his present and Sam is going to wish he’d paid more attention to Gran’s silly sayings because, without them, he may not survive.
The creatures in this book, the Dreables, were the perfect balance of scary and stupid. I liked that they were ugly and creepy but were easy to manipulate as long as a child kept their wits. As a main character, Sam was brilliant. He was just your average pre-teen child, dismissive, unapologetic and uninterested in anything his Gran had to say. I loved watching him develop through the book and slowly realise how important everything his Gran said, was. Couple this with the other moral ideas (like always be kind) that helped influence the story-line and I can imagine this would make the perfect bed time story for any young child.
The story itself was simple but it was still entertaining and it had all the old children story ideas to help it feel like a classic. Overall I was really pleased with this story and I’m surprised I got it as a free kindle download. What a great little find.
