Sabrina and Daphne Grimm's parents disappear, and they land in the state foster care system, where they become a major trial to everyone who deals with them. Then after a year or so, when they have run through all possible foster homes, they are told their grandmother has applied for custody. This is a great shock to them, because their parents told them their grandmother died before Sabrina was born.
The unexpected appearance in their lives of a supposedly dead grandmother is the least of the surprises in store for the sisters. From their grandmother's friend Mr. Canis, to Mayor Charming, to strangely aggressive fireflies, to a very strange boy called Puck, the inhabitants of Ferryport Landing are a very unusual bunch, and in some ways, strangely familiar.
Disillusioned after the past year of foster care, eleven-year-old Sabrina has no trust left for these strangers, and at first refuses even to believe that the elderly Mrs. Grimm is the grandmother she'd been told was dead. Her claim that the town of Ferryport Landing is inhabited by fairy tale characters ("Everafters"), and that it's the Grimms' hereditary duty both to maintain the spell that contains them there, and to be the detectives who solve any mysteries that arise in the unusual town, is of course dismissed out of hand.
Then Granny Grimm and Mr. Canis are kidnapped by a giant.
Sabrina's hostile cynicism, contrasted with Daphne's trusting innocence, gets a little wearing at times, but overall, this is a funny, silly book, an enjoyable light read, with some of the sometimes-shocking violence of the tales recorded by the the Brothers Grimm.
Good fun, not too saccharine.
Book trailer
I borrowed this book from a friend.
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