Midnight for Charlie Bone book review and Readathon update

Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I would probably give this book a 3.5 star rating if it would let me. It was a fun book, full of magical abilities, friendship, and eerie circumstances. Charlie discovers he is a descendant from The Red King, who was a magician wielding magical abilities. The book starts with Charlie just discovering his abilities, which whisks him off on an adventure, including new friends, a new school, new villains, and a lot of adventure for a ten year old boy. I thought it was cute, and held my interest throughout the entire book. The only thing I disliked was that there was an overwhelming amount of mean people in this book, some whom were adults in Charlie's own family. It was a little off-putting, but the positivity amongst Charlie and his friends made it easier to focus on the fun of it all. There are some very slight scary parts, more just really eerie, but for a kid that doesn't do well with that sort of thing, they might not want to pick it up. There is also a scene where an animal is injured pretty badly, which also might bother some children. I know my own ten year old daughter wouldn't like to read this book because of those two things, however, I'm sure there are a lot of kids that would absolutely love this book!
Like some others have mentioned when reviewing this book, the ending is fast. The book winds down to one last detail that needs to be taken care of, which would have been a good moment for the author to add a last bit of adventure, which seems like where it is going by how it is written up to that point. Then...BAM! It is immediately solved with basically no opposition, which was kind of weird, and unrealistic compared to the rest of the book. That literally doesn't happen until the last ten pages of the book. It is, however, pretty awesome how it is resolved, but I think the author could have at least added some things to fill it in a little more for it to not feel so rushed.
Overall...I'd recommend this book to anyone that is looking for an adventurous middle grade read.

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Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon final update:
I ended up not staying up too late last night. I wished I had been able to so that I could have gotten some more reading in! But, I did at least finish Midnight for Charlie Bone before I fell asleep, bringing my reading total up to 201 pages. Probably pretty sad for a readathon, but not too bad for me personally, especially on a day that was also a family outing day. I am happy that I at least finished a book, it makes me feel like I accomplished something on a day that I probably wouldn't have pick up a book!