Bridget E. Osborne's Reviews > Nothing Else But Miracles

** spoiler alert ** 2.5 stars.

Meh.
That just about sums this book up. Meh. If I didn’t know this was written my the same author as A Place to Hang the Moon, I would never in a million years have guessed it. I enjoyed this book as in it was a quick and easy read with a trio of charming siblings. But I have a multitude of problems. Brace yourselves. A rant is coming.
The writing, frankly, annoyed me. The constant breaking of the fourth wall, the lists, etc., all seemed like an attempt to be witty and funny, but mostly came off as grating, especially since they were sometimes very ill placed, at points that were not supposed to be remotely funny.And the DIAMOND. Don’t even get me started. Why mention the diamond at all? It was SO POINTLESS and had ZERO RELEVANCE to the plot. It was just a red herring, which to me (though I’m sure it wasn’t) felt like I was being laughed at. I guessed almost right away that the diamond was a red herring, but when it was revealed that it had nothing to do with the plot, it felt like, “lol I tricked you the diamond was pointless sorry not sorry lol.” It just annoyed me immensely.
The letters Dory found were similar. They had no relevance to the plot. It felt like someone had found them in real life; a cool thing to find but it doesn’t actually come to anything. That’s fine and all, but this is not supposed to be like in real life. This is supposed to be a story.
The plot was another problem. I was confused about what story the author was trying to tell here. The characters did not have to come over any huge struggles or character flaws. They learn practically nothing. They hardly develop. There was no real external conflict, either. The problems with their landlord and stuff was all solved for them by their neighbor.
One last thing (I promise this is the last thing 😂) ‘miracles’ was never really a theme in this book. The word was said, like maybe three times? But it wasn’t important to the characters, it wasn’t important to the plot, it just seemed rather arbitrary.
So, in short, (if you’re still even here, how many people are going to bother reading to the end of this high-schooler’s rant about a middle-grade piece of fiction??) I’m disappointed. I hope Kate Albus’ future works will be more like A Place to Hang the Moon, and less like this.