The Children's Home

Title: The Children's Home
Author: Charles Lambert
Genre: Fantasy
Source Hardback
Rating: 1 out of 5 paws


Morgan lives in his estate home with only a care taker.  When children start to mysteriously appear on his doorstep, Morgan begins to wonder not only where they come from, but what purpose do they serve.  Every child that arrives, he takes in and slowly some strange things begin to happen and it seems as though the children randomly disappear and appear in thin air.  These children, the oldest David mainly, have an odd understanding of Morgan's past.  Together with a live in doctor, Dr. Crane.  The children begin to discover oddities within the attic and other rooms of the house.  Dr. Crane and Morgan begin to wonder what is really behind the motives of these children, and what is hidden within this estate.

I found this book on the shelf at my local library and decided to give it a try.  It sound interesting and being compared to Narnia and Golden Compass, I was more than intrigued.  But then I started reading the book and became more and more disappointed.  The more I tried to read it the more disappointed I got as it got harder to understand what exactly was going on in the book.  After finishing it, I still cannot tell you what happened or why something happened.  It was beyond confusing.  I tried to explain this book to my friend and was unable to even give him an idea of what the book was about.


The chapters had subtitles which told you what was going to happen in that chapter.  While I know other novels that have done this and it worked well, it did not work with this novel.  The chapters were rather short so a brief one line summary told you basically everything you needed to know about the chapter.  This also made me want to skip a chapter or two because it didn't seem like it would fit in with what the story was about or that it would add any depth to the story or even answer of the questions I had lingering.  I still have questions lingering.


I kept asking myself "wait, what?"  I was hoping for a dark fairy tale that was a cross between Narnia and Golden Compass as it was marketed on the book jacket but it had elements from neither story, nor would I even consider this a fairy-tale.  I would not recommend this book at all.  It felt like a wasted day.