review: liesl & po by lauren oliver

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Liesl & Po jumps right into its alternate universe where the sun no longer shines and ghosts from The Other Side are able to communicate with The Living Side. The lack of setup resulted in me feeling frustrated a number of times. I stopped reading for over a month before I was able to get past my annoyance at plot points. The early chapters primarily serve to introduce the various characters, but there’s no real sense of connection until they all come together late in the book. It takes an excruciatingly long time to reach the rising action and climax, but things do start to pick up as the book progresses and the characters start to interact. Once I got through the first few chapters, Liesl & Po developed into a much more enjoyable book.

The book is fairly grim with a stepmother attempting to kill Liesl (after killing the girl’s father) so the evil woman can inherit all the money. The subplots as equally as dark with The Lady Premiere also trying to kill a child, which makes the suggested Middle Grade reading level a little young, in my opinion. Despite all my early hesitations however, I did enjoy Liesl & Po by the end.
3/5
Review copy from Amazon Vine.