The Mysterious Benedict Society was an entertaining read, but it really felt familiar, like I’ve read this before. I saw someone make the comparison to Willy Wonka, and I can definitely see that as in there is a mysterious benefactor who wants/needs several children to accomplish a major goal (in this case defeating an enemy who may or may not be known to Mr. Benedict; it’s rather unclear how much he knows about what’s going on for much of the book), but there is something else too. I want to say there’s a bit of A Series of Unfortunate Events, with the puzzles and the mysterious villain who want to take over the world (or something like that), but it’s more than that too.
There is an ad in the paper for children to take a mysterious test, and they prove to be unexpected as tests and results. The children who make it are all brilliant in some way and also very different in personality. Kate is outgoing and good with gadgets and action; Reynie is highly intelligent, thoughtful, and a natural leader; Sticky has what seems to be a photographic memory as well as an interest in information, and Constance is just special. 3 are orphans, sort of, and one has run away. After they are recruited, they are sent as a team to a special school run by an evil genius type who is doing something nefarious but needs kids to do it, and they have to stop him before he takes his plan world-scale. Seriously, why is this so familiar? I could swear I know it from somewhere.
The puzzles involved first in the testing to get the team together and then at the school where they go undercover are a lot like those silly logic puzzle games and brain teasers you see a lot in late elementary school {read all the questions on this test first, and then when you get to the end, the final instruction is “ignore all the questions, just put your name on and wait”; remember those?}, so they are figure-outable a lot of the time even for normal people once you get the hang of the kind of thing that is going on. It’s also entertaining to watch the kinds together as a group. They are clearly not normal children, but on the other hand, they have reactions and feelings that do seem very normal. Except for Constance, and I have to say the big reveal/explanation about her at the end makes sense, but it struck me as too improbable, even for the world of this story.
The other kind of strange thing to me is that this is on the one hand a novel; the page size and font size are close to standard, and the book is 485 pages long. On the other hand, this is still very much like a children’s middle grade book in terms of characters, plot, and general style and tone. In a lot of ways, it’s less sophisticated than Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and that was originally marketed as for younger readers. But then where have I read this kind of thing before. That’s the real mystery to me, and it’s gonna bug me until I figure it out. Maybe the sequels will help?