Member Reviews

These choose your own adventure type books are hard to pull off, and this one does not. Narrative was extremely weak and its overall construction leaves a lot to be desired.

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A fun and adventurous take on the choose-your-own-adventure format, making each decision count and every item collected useful in the reader’s quest!

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I think that this book is a fun game with logic and educational puzzles. There is also an element of alliance building and strategy gaming. This book is aimed at children and young readers. The premise is that the player has been abandoned on a mysterious island. You have to find a way to escape. There are obstacles and riddles in the way. The "escape room" fad basically in a book form, this read is about freeing yourself and finding a way to avoid downfall.

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Choose your own adventure books are so much fun to experience. I love the concept of this book but it was so hard to get the true feeling of how this book works since there are no clickable links like in an ebook or the ability to flip pages as with a physical book. This was definitely hard to maneuver through as a Netgalley pdf.

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I think this would be a great book for a child, maybe 7-10 years old. When I read the description I envisioned it being for someone younger. It is difficult to provide an honest review because the digital version of this book does not lend itself to the concept, you really need the paper book.

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Escape Book Mystery Island is a type of Choose your own adventure book. I will say it was difficult to follow and "flip" through pages in the digital format so I don't want to take away from that as I think kids will really enjoy the adventure in print form.

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Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was my kid's first choose your adventure book, even though the book was a bit too complicated for her, she still loved the idea you can choose where to go.

This book would be so good as a ebook, where you can jump to different sections, review the map, review the objects easily. As a Net Gallery read, I used good- old paper to plot down a rough draft of the map and keep track of inventory.

The list of the object combination was confusing for me at first (as a 36 years old), once I understood what I was suppose to do, it was very clever and added elements of fun to the book.

Would be better reading experience as a paper book, or a E- book. Netgallery version was a bit inconvenient with all the scrolling.

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This is a fun choose your own adventure book.
I think kids will really enjoy it, however the instructions are a little hard to follow. Nevertheless, it’s still a great read.

The story is exciting and full of adventure. The puzzles are quite engaging as well. I really liked the cute and colorful illustrations, which will certainly grab the attention of kids.

Choose your own adventure books have been my favorite since childhood so I would definitely recommend this book for kids. Choosing the path helps with decision making skills, and the puzzles and brain teasers are good for building up the mind.

Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.

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You have been part of a pirate crew then bitten awake by a parrot . The parrot helped you escape from the pirates. They blew up part of a volcano. I wasn't interested in the treasure map. Cute but not too childish

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This is a junior version of the Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook, and make no mistake. And it's a lot better than the other from this publisher I've recently played, the entirely unrelated 9781524855895. Here, unlike before, we get a very gentle 'in', and the young player is easily guided into knowing what to do. They're comfortably informed how the concept of not reading this in printed order works, and about the engine of the book, that relies on a chart of combinations and choices, that depends on where you've been and what you've picked up. That chart does kind of ruin some puzzles, when you see what they entail ahead of time, but never mind. For people who have yet to come across this kind of adventure book, it's a good, solid grounding.

It's also very child-friendly, in that you're never allowed to die. Even if you plummet to a sure and certain death, you're allowed to reboot at the previous 'save point', and have another go. And those save points are an element of how this book has an unusual structure, even for such gamebooks – instead of flicking through manically to randomly-numbered paragraphs, here we concentrate on one section at a time – those between 40 and 49, for example – and play them out before unlocking other areas of the story's map, or going back where we came from. Now, having mapped it I was surprised to find myself told I'd come to the end, when I knew I'd not done it all – but I'd completely forgotten the initial three-way junction. The exhortation to make sure I'd covered all the ground kind of went over my head, obviously. So it is a little unfortunate that I found the successful conclusion without having covered one branch of the book's tree, and it's even more unfortunate that that was nearly vital in solving one of the puzzles I'd encountered and met with bewilderment, but I dare say it is a little easy to have a book like this where the path from beginning to end is a little too fluid, and the reader's path through it is not easily guaranteed.

All told it's a small map – this after all contains half the content of the more mature 'Fighting Fantasy', if that. But it provides for a book that's quite distinctive (where it's helped by the pleasantly vivid illustrations), and while it kind of lost the drama of leaving you on the side of an erupting volcano for other concerns, it was an engaging plot for the target reader. It's not too boy's-own, and girls could play even if you're clearly a young male pirate lad, your parrot companion is not at all annoying, and all told it's not too difficult to succeed with. A success.

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