Let me start out by saying
that I wasn’t originally planning to read and review The Isle of the Lost by Melissa de la Cruz at this point in time.
However, since the Disney channel original movie Descendants just aired, I decided to binge read The Isle of the Lost since it serves as
a prequel to the movie; that being said, here are my thoughts on the book.
Right off the bat, I have to
say that I really liked this book, and it definitely serves as great set-up for
the movie since the book ends right where the movie begins with Ben deciding to
let Mal, Evie, Jay and Carlos out of the Isle of the Lost and come to Auradon,
but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Given the fact that Mal is
the daughter of Maleficent, Evie is the Evil Queen’s daughter, Jay is Jafar’s
son, and Carlos is the son of Cruella De Vil, this book really reminded me of the
TV show Once Upon a Time since the
show really plays around with famous characters from various fairytales, as
well as other books like this book does. Once
Upon a Time has even featured Maleficent, the Evil Queen and Cruella De
Vil. However, both this book and the movie Descendants
is obviously doing its own thing with the characters just like Once Upon a Time has also done its own
thing with fairytale characters throughout the course of the show’s run.
The overall tone of the book
and the fact that the characters seem to view things that in the real world are
typically considered bad behavior and bad emotions as being good in their minds
and things that are considered good behavior and positive emotions as being
wrong really made me think a lot about the book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket and how those
books are kind of depressing in a very comical way. The fact that the overall
tone of this book felt very reminiscent of A
Series of Unfortunate Events is definitely one of the things that I liked
the most about this book.
However, while overall tone
of the book reminded me a lot of A Series
of Unfortunate Events, the way their school and their classes were
described reminded me a lot of the Harry
Potter books and the classes that the characters took at Hogwarts.
While I really liked all of
the characters in the book, Carlos was definitely my favorite character.
Despite the fact that all of the characters in the book were raised to be evil,
I feel like the parts with Carlos had the most heart and were at times kind of
sad, especially whenever Carlos would talk to the others about what it was like
to have Cruella De Vil for a mother.
