Book Review: The Name of This Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch (Secret Series #1)

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: Two lead characters; fun story

Cons: The narrative hook ultimate harms more than helps

The Bottom Line: 

Book does not quite work

Story would have been better

Without writing hook

My Opinion of This Book is Mixed

I had eyed the Secrets Series for a while before I picked up the first book.  The story sounded interesting, and the big gimmick, a narrator who constantly warns about how dangerous it is to know the story, sounded like fun.  Somehow, plunging into The Name of this Book Is Secret wound up being less than fun.

The story centers on ten-year-olds Cass and Max-Ernest (if those are their real names).  Cass is a survivalist, never without her backpack, and already has a reputation for call in false alarms.  Max-Ernest is an aspiring stand up comedian with a mind for logic puzzles.

One day, while Cass is visiting her grandfathers at the antique store they run, a woman comes in and gives them a mysterious box called The Symphony of Smells.  Inside it are a bunch of test tubes filled with smells.  The next day, Cass begins to question what happened to the previous owner of those vials.  Where will her curiosity lead?

On the one hand, the book is a decent enough mystery.  The story takes a little while to get going, but once it does it takes off in an unexpected direction.  This is a wild ride that I enjoyed, and I think the target age of late elementary school will also enjoy.  There are some threats of torture late in the book, and maybe they are worse than in other kids' books, but not by much.

While I liked Cass and Max-Ernest, they were the most developed of any of the characters.  The rest were two dimensional at best.  Most were just one note characters.  This is especially true of Max-Ernest's parents.  They are divorced but live together in separate sides of a house because it's better for him.  Um, okay.  I think it was supposed to be funny, but it struck me as stupid.

The worse part, however, was the gimmick of the narrator.  Our omniscient narrator quite often interjects himself into the story with commentary, either telling us that he's not telling us something for our own safety or commenting on the action.  Some of it is fun, like the three page chapter where he bribes himself into continuing the story with a piece of gourmet chocolate.  Other times, it just gets annoying, like the time he spends half a page explaining to us that what he just told us actually hadn't happened the way he said.  Instead, here's what happened, but he told it to us the other way first because we needed the information he had the characters say to understand what came next.  Um, no.  Again, this was a stupid choice by the author trying to be funny that just fell flat.

Frankly, I think the gag with the narrator was the worst strike against the book.  I was expecting something more dangerous than what we got.  Ultimately, I did feel a little let down by where the story ended, although the final chapter certainly set things up for the rest of the series.

There is a clever premise to the series that will capture the imagination of kids.  I get why they love it so much.  But the execution of The Name of this Book Is Secret left something to be desired.