The Conjuring Glass by Brian Knight

I received this book as part of the LybraryThing Early Review and here is my review

What's the book about?

Penny has recently become an orphan. If this wasn't enough life changing, she moves from San Francisco to the little town of Dogwood in Washington. There she will meet her mother's long time friend and her godmother Susan.

She will also meet Zoe who will become her best friend and her companion in adventure.

What was different of this book?

I think a lot of people will read the book and at first get the feeling that they've heard this before. Magic, poor orphan, evil magician? But, fear not, the story is not a copy cat version of Harry Potter in anyway. Even compared with the first book of the HP series this, The Conjuring Glass is more oriented to younger children. 

What about the main character?

In the book Penny will have to learn a lot by herself and about herself.  If you put yourself in the shoes of a 10 year old I think this is a very relatable character. The book also touches a little bit of bullying because Penny is physically "different" (she is very, very short and gets teased about it a lot) and I wish in the second book we will see her standing a bit more for herself.

The 10% moment

It was easy to get to this point of the book. The prose is very easy to follow and there is not a lot of twists and turns about the characters, all of them introduced to a slow, agreeable pace. 

Final thoughts

I loved the drawings in the book. Another reason why I think this is more a Middle School oriented book than a Young Adult. I liked the fact that we have strings of the story that lead to the second book, without giving everything away yet remaining quite straight forward. Even though is not a book full of surprises is a nice reading and I think it would please is target audience.