Cloaked

This book was quite obviously written by a female, I'll just say it straight out.  I mean, seriously?  The main character is named Johnny and is obsessed with shoes.  I'm not judging: only really good female authors can write realistically from a boy's (first-person) point of view.  That being said, the book wasn't bad.  The ending was predictable from the very beginning, but it wasn't so bad that the story was boring.  There were quite a few really good plot twists all throughout, and the fact that she melded seven different (rather obscure, at that) fairy tales to make this book really elevated this novel to the next level.

Meet Johnny, a cobbler in present-day Miami.  He runs his family's shoe-repair business and faces poverty every day - not in the people's shoes he fixes, but in his own home.  He works to take care of his mom, dreams of adventure, hangs out with his best friend, Meg, and in between all of this, draws (what else) shoes.  But when a magic-loving princess from Aloria comes to stay at the hotel his business is located in, his life changes forever.

A good read, though predictable at times, definitely check it out for its coverage of obscure fairy stories.

Hungry Lionel gives this:

3/5