City Of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab (Blogmas)

I feel ashamed that i’ve never finished a Victoria Schwab book until City Of Ghosts. I’ve always wanted to pick up one of her books, but the length of most of them intimidated me quite a lot, so when i found out she was releasing a middle-grade ghost book, i jumped at picking it up as soon as it landed in shops.

I’ve been more interested in middle-grade recently, with Tom Fletcher’s books being released over the last few years, it has sparked something in me that really enjoys a middle-grade book every now and then. And considering i have an interest in ghosts, i figured City Of Ghosts would be the perfect book for me.

Going in to it, i was still a little nervous about the writing style, which i know, seems absolutely ridiculous now – it’s a middle-grade so no way would the writing be that complex or have a lot of twists in (well it does end up with quite a few twists in, but you know what i mean). I really enjoyed her writing style and how atmospheric she made it. I also really appreciated the way she wrote her characters. I thought they were excellent and really fit well in to the story. Everyone seemed to have their place, like she was just writing a vivid dream. It was very clever.

On the topic of the characters, i adored the friendship base of this book. The book follows our main character and her best friend, who happens to be a ghost. It doesn’t taint the friendship and is treated like every other middle-grade friendship that i’ve come across, it was really interesting and lovely to see it play out, especially as they were a boy and girl. I also really loved the parents of the story. They were very well written and i had a clear image of what they were like. They were a really wonderful part of the book to me.

I mentioned briefly about the atmosphere of the book. City Of Ghosts is set in Edinburgh, which was one thing that drew me to reading it. I’ve recently been on a trip to Edinburgh and fell in love with the city, so i was excited to relive some of that and imagine them walking through the streets. That’s exactly what this book did for me. The writing about the city was perfect and i can imagine anyone that has visited the city will appreciate the writing. It captured the atmosphere of Edinburgh perfectly. Along with the ‘real world’, the ‘ghost world’ Victoria created was incredibly creepy, so much so i was on edge reading it a few times, because of the way it was written.

City Of Ghosts is wonderful. It’s possibly one of my favourite middle-grade novels at the moment. The writing was far better than i ever imagined, and the whole feel of the book made me very cosy. I kind of wish i’d have saved it for Halloween, when i could truly appreciate the story.