ARC Review: Alessia in Atlantis: The Forbidden Vial by Nathalie Laine

Title: Alessia in Atlantis: The Forbidden Vial
Author: Nathalie Laine
Genre: Middle Grade/Fantasy
Publisher: Self-Pub
Publication Date: March 1st, 2021
Edition: eBook, 313 pages
Source: NetGalley
Pre-Order: Barnes & Noble | Book Depository

Synopsis:

   It’s not unusual for twelve-year-old Alessia to lose control of her emotions and create a scene at school. 

It is unusual when one day she’s attacked there by a giant frog monster and plunged into the underwater realm of Atlantis in an overturned boat. 

   On arriving in Atlantis, she learns that her long-lost father may have been from there. Determined to investigate, she stays and enrolls in Atlantide school: The Octopus’s Garden. 

   But uncovering the truth is not easy when the tyrannical Atlantide Emperor forbids asking about missing people. With the help of her newfound school friends, Alessia will have to steal evidence from a grumpy teacher, escape from rebel merfolk and make rhymes with menacing blue people of Minch to discover the key to her past. 

Meanwhile, someone knows exactly who she’s the daughter of, and is ready to kill her for it.

   This book was a fun adventure. I really liked Alessia as a main character, but for me, many of the supporting characters weren't as compelling. The plot took a while to take off, and the shortness of the chapters broke the story up too much for me. It was well into half the book before I really felt like things were developing. It's just not as fast-paced as most other MiddleGrade I've read. 

    Alessia is an interesting character, she suffers from an overabundance of empathy, feeling the emotions of others to a pretty extreme point, and I like that the main character in a kids book has a lot of empathy. Empathy is something that kids need to learn about. I was a kid once, most people don't develop empathy until they are much older. 

   I did enjoy this book, just not as much as I would have liked. I keep wondering if this is going to be a series, and I'm still not sure. I think the world could be explored more, but this book also ends in a way that it could be a stand-alone. 

   There were just parts of the plot that moved too fast and some that kind of meandered for me. I think this book is great for younger Middle-grade readers. 3/4th grade readers. I do think kids would enjoy this book. It just didn't grab me the way other Middle-Grade books have.