The writing style was easy and sweet. If you're looking for a novel that was written well and grammatically correct, than this one lights up in all those areas. It is extremely important for a novel to be written well, especially for an audience of children, and it just made me glad to read. There were so many good qualities to the writing! I loved it!
The plot was done well. Everything fit and there weren't any plot holes or things that I would have changed. I felt like this story would have been given more credit if read by somebody younger than me. There just wasn't enough...drama...in it for me. I felt bored at times and had to skim read to get to the parts that best appealed to me.
I felt like the ending could have been a lot better. Everything just got wrapped up to well and it didn't leave much for a cliff-hanger, though the author definitely attempted one. The open end made room for a potential series and the author’s choice to write a happy ending was poor. A cliff-hanger would have encouraged her readers to continue reading. If there WERE to be more novels in the series I would be interested to see where the author would lead it, but as of now, I am not expecting too much.
I also felt like the basic idea of the story was overused and unoriginal. The fairies, and trolls and goblins weren’t anything different from the million others out there and didn’t stand out in any way. This was definitely something that lowered by opinion of the novel.
Congratulations to Carrie Jones on publishing the very first story she had ever written!


Rating Plan
1 star : Strongly did not like the book, writing and plot was bad. Idea of the book was against my liking.
2 star : Didn't like it, didn't find it interesting or gripping. Seemed to drag on to me.
3 star : An average book. Wasn't bad or good. Everything else was well done. Original idea.
4 star : Like a 3 star but has potential to it as a series or the book grew on me as it progressed and certain scenes captured me. I Enjoyed it and read it in one sitting.
5 star : I LOVED IT! I stayed up late until 3 am. Author is a genius, characters, plot, idea, development, EVERYTHING was EXCELLENT. Nothing else can possibly be said except that its 5 STAR!

ARC kindly provided by Bloomsbury Publishing Australia in exchange for an honest review.

Review

‘Time Stoppers’ was a novel I wasn't sure what to expect of. I knew it was going to be a lot more “childish” in a sense because its target audience is children between nine and twelve. I didn't expect too much of the novel; yet I knew that the writing was going to be good. This was going to be one of those novels that just CLICKED for me or one that didn't.
Jamie and Annie were quite the pair. First, I loved their names together, so kind and good. These two were really the definition of the sweetest characters after having survived a rough childhood. Further into the novel, I realised why I felt so disconnected: As I am older, the values I had as a child had changed so the way I thought was different. I believe this was the cause of the riff. I strongly recommend this for nine to twelve year olds; they will certainly love it!
I enjoyed the introductory part of the novel, which took up about a third or fourth of the entire story, but it just didn't hook me as much as I would have liked it to. It was too slow for me and a bit more action would have been in favour, yet for a senior-primary school novel, this was done superbly well. I definitely see myself loving this novel if I were younger as it embodied everything that I loved back then: action and a cute, puppy-love romance with a moral or lesson at the very end. I guess, as a lover of the young-adult genre I expected a lot more violence and romance; but, I knew that in order to get a good reading experience, I had to alter my expectations to suit the genre I was reading.
‘Time Stoppers’ that felt light-hearted and with an easy atmosphere and mood. It was a good novel; a kind one that teaches the young reader yet appeals to their good nature. Yet, I couldn't for one instant find myself extremely touched by the emotions coursing through the pages. To be frank, I felt a little bit detached and unable to connect with the main characters but I appreciated the theme of hope and love that ran throughout the whole story.