Looking For a Good Book

Teenager Xavier Oaks is reticent to spend a weekend with his father and his father’s pregnant girlfriend. It means leaving behind his mother, younger brother, and all his friends. Still, it’s a family obligation and it’s only for a week. One morning, however, when they wake up, they are nowhere where they’re supposed to be. The house is no longer in the woods, but in a field – like a farm field. It’s as though someone picked up the entire house while they slept, and moved it.

It’s definitely unsettling but the family explores their new location to discover that they appear to be trapped in a small, domed enclosure. Some farm animals and farming tools have been supplied – they can survive but they have to work for it.

Three years go by. Xavier has a three year old half brother, when a new house appears inside the dome. Xavier explores it and learns about the family it comes from, but it is empty. He does learn, however, that this family has a teenaged daughter – about whom he learns a few private details. A few days later and the family suddenly appears – husband, wife, teenage daughter, young daughter. But unlike Xavier’s family who have accepted whatever strange fate they are living, the patriarch of the new family is bent on getting out.

The two families disagree on many things (including who’s behind their captivity), but they do get along and help each other out as much as possible. Xavier, who’s smitten with the more worldly teenage daughter, Mackenzie, is happy to do whatever he can just to spend time with her.

I find that I do enjoy Kenneth Oppel’s writing (I’ve read a few of his books now) and I really looked forward to this YA book that perhaps falls into the ‘speculative fiction’ category more than anything else.

What Oppel captures best here is a teenage boy’s bewilderment, acceptance of family obligations, and obsession and curiosity of a particular girl. In fact, really this book is a teenage boy’s ideal fantasy – to be the only possible object of a girl’s attention (practically forced to be friends) – and a girl who is more experienced in everything to help show him new things.

But it’s this very thing that Oppel does so well that also hampers the book. We’re practically encouraging misogyny. It’s subtle because of course Xavier does everything ‘right’ and with a kind heart, hoping to impress Mackenzie, but it is in fact him ‘getting’ her.

**WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD**

I did enjoy the plot. I quite like stories that let (or make) the reader do some work and don’t answer every question.  That’s definitely the case here, and readers who need closure in their books shouldn’t read this.

But in keeping with the misogyny theme, the only real ‘threat’ to Xavier’s getting closer to Mackenzie is eliminated in rather terrifying fashion.

Looking for a good book? I can see where 13, 14, and 15-year old boys are going to really love Kenneth Oppel’s Best of All Worlds, but other readers may not find it quite as enjoyable.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Best of All Worlds

author: Kenneth Oppel

publisher: Scholastic Press

ISBN: 9781546158202

hardcover, 256 pages