Review: Dalya and the Magic Ink Bottle

Name -Dalya and the Magic Ink Bottle

Pages -200

Author -J.M.Evenson

Publisher -Capstone Editions

Genre -Adventure, Fantasy, Children's fiction

Rating -4/5

Review no. -03

Source- NetGalley

Synopsis -

When twelve-year-old Dalya is dragged to Istanbul to help sell her family's ancestral home, the visit begins unpromisingly. Most of the aged mansion is off-limits because it's falling apart, her father is ignoring her, and her great aunt keeps prattling on about a family curse. Despite warnings against it, Dalya tiptoes upstairs, where she finds an old bottle of magic ink hidden under a floorboard. She asks the bottle's jinn (aka genie) to grant her a simple wish...to send her home. Except the jinn interprets "go home" to mean "send me back in time and turn me into a cat." Then Dalya must set off on a wild adventure through Istanbul's animal underworld to find the jinn with the power to set things right.

Review -

 This super cute middle grade book has it all, magic, friendship, family, adventure, time travel, animals. When Dayla and her estranged father visit his old family home in Istanbul, Dayla isn't happy as her workaholic father is always abandoning her for his work and she feels unloved and unwanted, till she follows a  strange cat to the forbidden upstairs rooms and finds a hidden ink bottle, which turns out to be magic. After getting in an argument with her Baba Dayla wishes to 'Go Home' and the magic in the Ink Bottle goes a little awry and Dayla finds herself in a strange and magical predicament. Dayla has to find friends and fast if she ever wants to get back home to her mother and Baba and on her strange and unusual journey she learns some hard lessons about friendship and family.

Overall a really enjoyable story, very well written, nothing to hard yo understand about this for the intended age group (except for pronunciation of a few names). The story flowed smoothly and the action scenes were very tense wondering how they would escape and save the day, some very well written characters also..