Main Characters: Beatrice Shakespeare Smith, Cobweb, Moth, Musterseed, Peaseblossom, Nate, Ariel, Ophelia, Stage Manager, Theater Manager, Mrs. Edith, Mr Hastings, Mr Tibbs

Summary:

Beatrice Shakespeare Smith is not an actress, yet she lives in a theater.
She’s not an orphan, but she has no parents.
She knows every part, but she has no lines of her own.
Until now.

Welcome to the Théâtre Illuminata, where the characters of every play ever written can be found behind the curtain. They were born to play their parts, and are bound to the Théâtre by The Book–an ancient and magical tome of scripts. Bertie is not one of them, but they are her family–and she is about to lose them all and the only home she has ever known.

Anna’s Thoughts:

Please no throwing of any type of rocks. Or cake.

I think there might be something wrong with me, just to let you know before I start this review. I have not out of the million of reviews I have read for this book, read a bad one. Yet somehow, despite how excited I was about it, and despite how much I wanted to luuurve it, after reading it, I’m left feeling ‘ehhh’.

First of all, let me start by saying I am not in any means exaggerating at the amount of main characters above. All of those people are quite important characters, and all have quite a few lines. This however is one of the reasons I will buy Act II (Perchance To Dream). She’s got 13 main characters, and yet none of them get lost in the story. Well, figuratively speaking. You don’t forget any of them either. The characters are so well made, and so unique that none of them are enough like the others to get them mixed up. Which leads me to the second reason I will buy Act II: Imagery. I’ll be damned if Lisa didn’t manage to create some of the best imagery possible. There was never once a time where I couldn’t picture what was going on. Never once where I wondered what a character looked like, or what a scene looked like. It was all there, every single detail.

I think the thing that put me off of the book the most was the ‘enter from stage left,’ ‘exit from stage right,’ ‘dim the lights,’ etc. I was never a Drama/Theatre person, I had friends that were, but never me. So some of the things were lost on me. Some of the references that were given might have been understood by others, but not myself. This however isn’t Lisa’s fault. I willingly purchased the book knowing what it was about (in fact when I saw it on the shelf, I think I even did a little dance in the middle of Borders. Maybe.) and I willingly read it. No one forced me to. So the two missing stars are less of a ‘this book is bad’ and more of a ‘this isn’t exactly the perfect book for me.’