I Capture the Castle: Young Adult Edition

Although I Capture the Castle was first published in 1948, the story line and characters are still enchanting today. Journal writing to become a better writer is appropriate practice for anyone, and Dodie shows, through Cassandra's journals, that she is an accomplished and talented writer. I really enjoy her sense of humor, as well.

This is a "small" book. The scene is circumscribed, the characters few, and the action minor. Yet is is a beautifully written, achingly real book about the passage from girlhood to adulthood. And in the end, the story seems bigger than it is.
My only complaint about this book is that I can never again read it for the first time.

Good story and well written. I felt the ending just kind of fell on the reader without much preparation - weak ending! Not because of the outcome of the story, but because the ending didn't seem to fit the direction of the story.

Great book by the author of 101 Dalmatians. The book takes the form of a girl's journal, and most interestingly, the girl's voice grows stronger and her writing better as the book progresses. As you would expect any young writer to improve as she wrote more. A top notch book.

I guess this must be a classic romance that helped to leave that genre breathless for more. Probably helped to kicked a whole industry off. My mother had whole cartons of this pulp, and I read a couple of Barbara Cartland's offerings back in my teens before I said to myself, well I try anything once. But this had considerably more twists, and it was so highly recommended, so I thought I would give it a whirl. It's written in that smooth Fred Astaire parlance, that one comes to expect from the 40s, but I was raised on that jive, so I dig it. Well they aren't speaking Martian! Sufficiently pithy to not cause dropsy, which is about as good as your going to get out of me for this type of thing. I guess I've made it abundantly clear that I don't know the genre though, huh?

This book is a delightful coming of age story. Witty and funny, it provides a window to life in England between the wars as it tells the story of a neglected teenager who falls in love and becomes a woman.

I think I started this book with my expectations too high. After all the glowing reviews I really expected a book that would grab me and not put me down, or at least one that would make it onto my bookshelf as a favorite. It's a good book. The characters are interesting and involving. Maybe if I'd read it when I was a teenager the unrequited love angst (well-written though it was) would not have put me off so much. But from my middle-aged perspective it let the book down. So my recommedation is to give this book to your teenage daughters and nieces, and to take the glowing reviews with a grain of salt.

We read this as a book club selection, and something rare happened: every one of us LOVED the book! The narrator Cassandra is an absolute delight, and the other characters were beautifully developed as well. We were particularly enthralled by her decidedly oddball father and his free-spirited loveable wife, Cassandra's stepmother. This was a heartwarming and joyful summer read, and didn't suffer from the overstuffed writing styles of some British authors of this era (the book was written in the 1940's). And it was a great book club choice, leading to a discussion on the changing roles of women in society and much more.

If you like Roahl Dahl or Stella Gibbons, then you will most definitely like this book. I had never heard of it until I read that J.K. Rowling liked it, so I bought it on those merits alone. Glad I did! Thoroughly enjoyable. Castles, gloominess, humor, clashing characters...it has it all.

The era, setting and atmosphere are big stars in this book - and the characters stand out as well with their quirks and challenging lives. What a refreshing, well written pleasure read. So worth reading.

Wish that mainstream writer's would read this and take a leaf out of Dodie's book (haha!) and have her talent for vocabulary and grammar. Not sure why it is in the Children's Reading genre as it is hugely readable by all ages (and genres!) and I don't know how many children would still be reading this in any case. Transports you to an England we all love and each character was so well drawn I am sure that they existed. Just wish that there was a sequel as I would have enjoyed knowing what happened to each of them in later years. If you have seen the film you will understand how well Bill Nighy et al captured the character!

The ingenuous yet incisive style of this book has hold my attention for days on end. I regret having end Cassandra story, even when I know it is somehow basic and too plainly innocent in its way. For the young and for the nostalgic oldies.

Thoroughly enjoyable story of two families in rural England in the first half of the 20th Century. And I agree with the cover quote from J.K. Rowling: "This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met."
-- Phyllis Zimbler Miller

The book was highly recommended to me, but I could never quite get into it. The people never caught my interest. So I read the first 2 chapters and the last chapter, and then commented "meh" as I deleted it from my Kindle.