Nevermoor is a fantastical world reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Jessica Townsend wrote the novel in 2017 to begin the ongoing Morrigan Crow series. While the books were technically written for middle school age children, the story, characters, and writing style is capable of being enjoyed by anyone and everyone.
As the name suggests, the story begins by following an eleven-year-old Morrigan Crow as she celebrates her birthday and the day of her death. She is known as a “cursed child” in her home of Great Wolfacre, a city that had never been especially ‘great’ for her.
She is later whisked away to the marvelous world of Nevermoor, a world that I have not left since the day I first read about it. The city is full of wondrous people, animals, and wunimals (who are essentially humans inside animal bodies, but they are neither human nor animal).
Nevermoor, the book, is built around a trial plot; Morrigan must go through various trials or go back to Wolfacre and risk her rather morbid birthday gift.
In the novel, every character is intricately written with not a single personality missing. Certainly not in Morrigan’s potential savior and criminal mastermind, Jupiter North, who can only be described as Morrigan aptly portrayed to be the “Big Gingery President of the Ginger Foundation for the Incurably Ginger”.
When I first read this book, I was under the flawed belief that I was too good for such a childish book. Of course I was in middle school at the time, like all children who think they are better than everyone else. However, I soon realized just how mistaken I was when tears streamed down my face as I watched a girl who spent her whole life being told she was a curse learn that she was so much more.
