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Breadcrumbs | Anne Ursu



Breadcrumbs | Anne Ursu

My Rating: 2/5 Stars

I picked up this book with the intention of it being a fast read. It was not. The story follows a young girl named Hazel, and her ongoing struggle to fit in with her fifth-grade class. Luckily, however, she has a best friend Jack who accepts Hazel, crazy fantasies and all. The novel is divided into two parts, and if I had stopped reading after the first, I would have categorized it as a middle-grade realistic fiction story about friendship. As soon as you start part two, the theme changes completely. Suddenly Jack is cursed and taken by an evil snow witch, and Hazel must traverse the dangerous and completely random magical woods that seemingly appeared next to the town's local sledding hill. This sudden jump halfway through Ursu's story was extremely unusual, not to mention unexpected. Many of the subplots from the first half, like Jack's mother's illness and Hazel's bullies, were completely dropped, never again mentioned or explained in full. Because of this, I finished reading with a sense of emptiness, almost like the story was lacking these key wrapups in order to make it feel complete. Onto the second half of the story. There were many issues I saw, but the main one that struck me was the utter randomness of the woods. Hazel encountered many different characters that seemed to be cut and pasted from numerous different popular fairy tale stories. At times there were so many different subplots to keep track of, I got extremely confused. The author's only explanation for this was that "the woods weren't supposed to make sense". Although for me this book had many downfalls, I did particularly enjoy the Anne Ursu's writing style. She had a way of crafting certain phrases that were extremely beautiful and thought-provoking. One quote near the beginning of the novel reads, "She gazed at the snowflake, considering its delicate structure. Inside it was another universe, and maybe if she figured out the right way to ask, someone would let her in" (pg. 3). In my opinion, the author is very strong at writing realistic fiction but seemed to lack originality when it came to the fantasy bits. I feel I would have enjoyed this book more if I read it in grade school, the intended target audience. I believe that my age and experience with other fantasy novels led me to have a higher expectation for the development of the fantasy woods. Two out of five stars to Anne Ursu for Breadcrumbs.





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