I really enjoyed this children’s book by Gareth P. Jones. Far more than I prob­a­bly should have, given that I’m about four­teen years older than its intended audience!

Meet the won­der­fully weird Con­si­dine chil­dren and their very nor­mal cousin, Mariel, and dis­cover the dark secret at the heart of their family.

Until recently, Mariel had no idea that she had any rel­a­tives at all, let alone a pack of long-lost cousins. And per­haps there is a good rea­son. Because Mariel’s fam­ily are strange… very strange indeed.

I have to admit I was drawn to this because of the lovely cover: tra­di­tional art­work with a bit of an Adams fam­ily, Victorian-gothic vibe going on and a host of inter­est­ing look­ing characters.

And I wasn’t dis­ap­pointed. Straight away we are intro­duced to Mariel’s strangely hos­tile cousins, who she meets for the very first time at her grandmother’s funeral. They range from the shy Lily, glam­orous Amelia, awk­ward and for­mal Ger­ald, obnox­ious Oberon, easy-going Fred­die, and the down­right creepy and pos­si­bly psy­chotic Elspeth, who was my per­sonal favourite.

It’s clear from the wary and rude wel­com­ing that they give Mariel that she isn’t wanted or con­sid­ered a ‘Con­si­dine’. Mariel, unsur­pris­ingly, is annoyed by their atti­tude and by the whis­pered death threats (cre­atively deliv­ered in verse form by the charm­ing Elspeth). All the grand­chil­dren were unusu­ally close to their grand­mother, yet none of them seem par­tic­u­larly upset that she is dead. And Mariel’s Aunts and Uncles don’t seem to regard her with quite the same rev­er­ence when asked about her. Then there’s the mys­tery of why Mariel’s mother chose to keep her far away for all those years. And how exactly did grand­fa­ther die?

All the char­ac­ters in The Con­si­dine Curse have dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties and were great fun to get to know. Mariel and her mother spend a few days at each of her Uncle’s houses and things get creepier by the day. There are vio­lent ani­mal attacks on life-stock and pets, strange howl­ing at night and local folk­lore tells of the beast of Wilderdale. Mariel is furi­ous she missed out on know­ing her own fam­ily, but the more she dis­cov­ers, the less cer­tain she is that she wants to know them at all. And then her mother announces they’ll be mov­ing back to the fam­ily home…

I guessed the fam­ily secret pretty eas­ily, given some unsub­tle clues, as I’m sure many read­ers will. Nev­er­the­less, the story is highly enjoy­able and well paced, reveal­ing just enough at the right moments while rais­ing more ques­tions to keep the reader engaged. There is a highly unusual end­ing that I didn’t expect at all and actu­ally left me rather unset­tled, as did the ‘coax­ing’ which I found beyond dis­turb­ing – but in a good way (as strange as that sounds). I like it when writ­ers have the abil­ity to leave me uncom­fort­able, long after I’ve fin­ished the book, par­tic­u­larly when it’s delib­er­ately intended.

The Con­si­dine Curse is a dark, twisted lit­tle tale that I think younger read­ers will really enjoy. Fans of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events will undoubt­edly love this one.