For me, the best part of The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls was the protagonist herself, Victoria. Victoria Wright is literally the best--she is the top of her class, has bouncy blonde curls, and keeps her room immaculately clean. My favorite things about Victoria, however, are her flaws. She may be polite and courteous, but otherwise she is pretty terrible at socializing, even though she personally finds it a waste of time as it is a distraction from her studies. For example, one day she decides that Lawrence needs her friendship, so just tells him that he is her friend now, without caring that he initially doesn't want to be her friend, and oftentimes she fails to realize the difference between constructive criticism and just being mean. When Lawrence expresses how much her friendship means to him, she freaks out and avoids him. Then a few weeks later Lawrence disappears, and when Victoria is the only one who remembers he is gone she finally, though begrudgingly, accepts how much his friendship means to her. Luckily for Lawrence, Victoria has another flaw: extreme stubbornness. It is this stubbornness which helps Victoria recognize that other kids are missing, that many people in town smile like someone is pulling back their lips, and that nobody ever talks about the local orphanage down the street, The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls. While I am of the opinion that the book lost some of its appeal once the gophers showed up(the grotesque isn't really my thing), overall I really enjoyed reading this. The most remarkable thing about this book is not the mystery, but that Legrand dared to write a protagonist who can be rude and selfish, but as reader you still wanted to root for her with every page turn. 4.5 stars

I wanted to like this book so badly. I love Claire LeGrand, and I'm dying to read Winterspell and Flights & Chimes... but Mrs. Cavendish just didn't do it for me like I'd hoped. It was very very dark, which I don't usually mind, if there's a point to it. And there didn't seem to be. I absolutely hated Victoria, the main character, at first. But it's a testament to Ms. LeGrand's writing that she could make what is essentially a less-flamboyant Veruca Salt likable in the end. I struggled to get behind Victoria from the beginning, and I finally gave up and got comfortable with what I saw has her flaws. In that aspect, the book was a nice ride & I appreciate the author for making me see so much more to her character than I initially found.

 

There's a lot of creep in Mrs. Cavendish, and a lot of adults doing very bad things. Much what goes on in the Home is vague & LeGrand's descriptive passages aren't strong enough for the reader to visualize things in their head, nor are they strong enough to further the mystery. They just left me confused. There are enough hints to make you wonder what is really going on - I had a whole litany of questions in my head as I read - but there's never much resolution or explanation. It felt like the entire run of the LOST tv series, mashed up with some asylum horror films, under the guise of a Roald Dahl-esque children's book. A lot of confusion & really dark stuff, but not enough magic & wonder to pull it off.

“Victoria Wright had only one friend, and he wasn’t even a real friend; he was a project, someone to fix and whip into shape.”

So, when Lawrence disappeared one day, Victoria missed him terribly much although she refused to admit it – at first. Also, she started questioning things when no one seemed to bother with Lawrence’s disappearance. In fact, they didn’t seem to remember him. Her investigation led her to Nine Silldie Place or what was known as The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls where she met Mrs. Cavendish and her gardener, Mr. Alice. Plot began to thicken up once Victoria talked to Mr. Tilbat, whose friend, Vivian Goodfellow never returned from the Home after she went inside to investigate. Vivian’s final fate was revealed in the end and it was not pleasant at all. I really liked her character from the little that I’ve seen of her.

Anyway, Victoria too ended up being taken by Mrs. Cavendish after the woman deemed Victoria as being too nosy. At the home, Victoria was reunited with Lawrence and some of the other missing children. She also met gobers, some kind of helpers for Mrs. Cavendish. Mrs. Cavendish hated the gobers and the reason was revealed together with the origin of the gobers. It was horrible and macabre. I think it was the sickest part of the story. The children, besides being submitted to rigid rules and severe punishments, were also made to attend pointless lessons and recited sentences like below.

“Children, whether they are boys or girls, educated or ignorant, must be as silent as possible as much as possible. Children are neither clever nor experienced enough to judge for themselves what is and what is not to be said. They must therefore and at all times defer to the wisdom of their elders. They must never speak out of turn. They must never be contrary. They must be extraordinary without being out of the ordinary.”

Victoria sometimes annoyed me but she was also charming and I can’t help but smile at some of her behaviors. Her bossy attitude was also not unlike mine so yeah… She said things like “I swear on my academic reports.” and actually being serious about it too! Her interaction with Lawrence was sweet, funny and endearing. It was amazing too the length she would go to find Lawrence considering that she was no rule breaker and always strove to be the perfect daughter as well as student. She took her name very seriously and used it as a motivation to be the top in everything along with her wishes to make her parents proud of her.

Overall, The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls was a creepy book. The ending particularly crept me and I shuddered to think of the fate of the children in Belleville especially with Victoria, Lawrence and the rest of the children who remember the Home were grown up and already gone from the town.

 

 

This is one of those books, that  hadn't  a trusted friend of mine read it, and praised it to the heavens, I probably, wouldn't have read it.

 

I admit. The combination of the tags, middle grade (are you nuts?) and horror, would have pretty much kept me away from this..

What can i say?

Things that are bound to end up gory, pretty much bore me...or scare me (depending on the amount)!

 

 

And then i normally consider myself too old for stories in which the lead characters are under the eighteen year old flag.

 

Yes, i know, i'm an idiot...especially because Victoria and her merry (not quite) gang are more mature than a vast assortment of new adult or even full grown up characters that have been plaguing  (a little like cockroaches, yes!) the literary market our days, with their: Oh, woe is on me....

 

And that not reading this would have been a shame, because this is one of those gems that a reader  occasionally is lucky enough to find!

 

The writing is absolutely superb!!

 

The characters are complex and interesting.. well, Victoria especially, is just bigger than life!  In a planet kind of way...(.but don't tell her i said THAT!!)

 

She's probably the most  intelligent and  rational twelve year old that i've ever "met"!!

Of course she's also bossy, manipulative, and a control freak!

She doesn't take it easy on us readers: She is the way she is. Take it, or leave it!

 

The mystery was just downright scary! And....ugh

 

So be prepared...do not trust the whole "middle grade" tag...reading this, (no matter how old you are....well, unless you're a psychopath) will leave you absolutely terrified...

 

The Cavendish Home For Boys and Girls - ... So the title had attracted my attention, and then I was just sitting there, thumbing through the Kindle store's cheap books for the month, wanting something less ponderous after the very good, but weighty [b:The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo|13330922|The Black Count Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo|Tom Reiss|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1337693786s/13330922.jpg|18538602]. There was a title I recognized, so I downloaded a sample, and before I'd finished the sample I'd decided to buy the book.Legrand manages to hit that sweet spot, along with [b:The Bad Beginning|78411|The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #1)|Lemony Snicket|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1370055267s/78411.jpg|1069597] etc., and [b:The Mysterious Howling|6609748|The Mysterious Howling (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place #1)|Maryrose Wood|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347467632s/6609748.jpg|6803715] etc., and [b:The Willoughbys|2114086|The Willoughbys|Lois Lowry|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1345715407s/2114086.jpg|2119510]. Books which are set in a world recognizable to us, but charmingly old-fashioned and a little anachronistic. An upper-class faux Edwardian world; come to think of it, they're probably all set in the world of the Mary Poppins movie, or perhaps the Willy Wonka movie. Anyway, this is one of those. It could be a musical.Twelve-year-old Victoria's best friend Lawrence is not at school. His parents say he's gone to visit a grandmother with pneumonia, but Victoria is seeing too many strange things to believe that excuse. And when she starts looking, and asking, and thinking, she discovers even more strange things. There are strange disappearances, many creepy roach-like beetles, dire warnings, an ominous Home at the end of the street, a really attractive and charming Mrs. Cavendish, and a building that is constantly re-forming itself like [b:House of Leaves|24800|House of Leaves|Mark Z. Danielewski|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327889035s/24800.jpg|856555].Well, the kids triumph in the end, of course, but there are some very uncomfortable moments along the way. A good, strong, creepy book.I bought it.