Review: Kingdom of Secrets by Christyne Morrell

~ Info ~

Kingdom of Secrets by Christyne Morrell

🖋 Author’s page
📚 Find the book here

~ Rating ~

⭐⭐⭐½

~ Review ~

Soar in a hot-air balloon with Prismena and Abi as they explore the mysterious Kingdom of Oren and uncover a sinister plot!

Prismena, or Prissy, has always dreamed of flying her father’s hot air balloons above the Kingdom of Oren. Her life is quite down-to-earth and ordinary, however, until a strange girl named Abi shows up and asks Prissy to smuggle a mysterious box onto one of her father’s balloons. Led by her new companion, Prissy is immersed in the Oren’s underworld, where abandoned orphans struggle to get by and a rebellion against the tyrannical ruler is brewing. Her father would never approve of Prissy’s new life, but the rebellion is calling to her. Will Prissy follow her heart and finally get the chance to soar?

“‘I remember when balloons were invented,’ Mother said to me once. We were in Fletcher’s field, watching our red balloon, The Flame, soar over us. ‘I thought they were something out of a dream,’ she said. ‘How else could such things float around in the sky without strings or magic?'”
– Kingdom of Secrets

The Kingdom of Oren lives up to the book’s title, as it is full of all kinds of secrets. It’s exciting to see Prissy go uncovering them as she follows her new friend Abi into the kingdom’s underworld of rebellious orphans and secret plots. Each twist of the story raises new questions. What is the king hiding, and is the queen really as mad as people say? It’s easy to relate to Prissy as she tries to make sense of all the strange things she’s finding out about her home.

At the start of the story, Prissy is very uptight and nervous, but with Abi’s help she slowly comes into her own, and grows more confident and daring. Abi, for her part, is a strong and interesting character who could have been the protagonist. The book’s focus on hot air balloons is intriguing and I enjoyed learning about how they work and how they played into the story

However, while some elements of the book were original and exciting, others felt standard and predictable, such as the cruel orphanage and the rebellion plotline. It would have helped if more had been done to make the world of Oren seem like a unique place, and not simply a backdrop for the story. In some chapters, the book jumps from the present with Prissy and Abi, to the past, where it follows a young girl’s life in the kingdom years ago. These segments from the past are not interesting enough to capture the reader’s attention and slow the book down. The biggest drawback is that the book’s ending is not believable. Different problems and intrigues are resolved too quickly and tidily to really be satisfying for the reader.

Prissy and Abi’s hot-air-balloon capers in Kingdom of Secrets will delight readers looking for an adventure story with a twist, so long as they don’t mind rather standard settings and a slap-dash ending.