Chris Columbus and Ned Vizzini's House of Secrets
When I found out that Columbus---director of the first two Harry Potter movies--was cowriting a middle-grade fantasy series with YA author Vizzini, I expected it to be cheesy, but hoped it would be fun. Unfortunately, it's neither cheesy nor fun, it's actually kind of terrible. Action scenes in every chapter don't make up for a complete lack of character development or world-building. I mean, look at the first Harry Potter book--the first third introduces us to Harry and makes us care, and then Rowling drops us into this insane place Hogwarts. Here, there aren't really any preliminaries; the family buys a magical house and things go haywire immediately, but somehow none of it is exciting. And it's a bummer, because the concept is interesting--three siblings sucked into the fictional world of a crazy occult author. But I really didn't enjoy any part of this. Maybe a kid would like it, but I don't really see why. C-.
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