A first effort from a fledgling author. If you've read The Shadow of the Wind or The Angel's Game, you'll be familiar with Zafon's writing style. Here it is in its infancy, and for a YA audience. The similarities are aided by a translation from Lucia Graves, who also translated his later books.

It suffers, however, from trying to put too many ideas into so small of a book. There are also a few plot threads that remain unresolved, The three stars are for the idea for the story, which could have been quite good.