Kaethe

Since I've loved Broach's other works, I thought I'd been a fan of this one too. But I wasn't. It's fine, it just wasn't great. With the story centered on the middle of three brothers, there's a lot of gender assumptions being made. Even though Henry accepts Delilah on their adventures, he still seems weirdly focused on her as a girl, rather than as another person. I like the set-up of the town and the mountain and the mystery, but the story feels kind of unresolved, rather than complete in itself. It's an old town in the Southwest but the four kids are all recent transplants and we haven't met anyone native or Hispanic, so it feels weirdly WASPy. And I really hate that the only mention of natives is a legendary massacre by Apaches. You know the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, when they had a Southwestern adventure that felt like the writer had researched by watching old Western movies? It felt a little like that, kind of dated.I'll probably read the next one, but I won't be counting the days.Library copy.