Book review - Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

One of my all-time favourite films (you can verify this by looking at my profile on Letterboxd) is Howl's Moving Castle, I like the storyline, the characters, and oh my gosh do not get me started on the music. However, I only found out it was adapted from a book about a year ago - judge me, seriously. I remember seeing a review of it pop up on my Blogger dashboard and immediately thinking 'I need to get my hands on this book'. It took a while but my parents gifted me the set for my birthday and I decided to start reading them in 2015 as I have to read 50 books this year for my reading challenge and I needed to save up books (no one said my logic was sound) so it took me a while to get started on this, but I can already tell you - this is gonna be a positive review.

Synopsis:

In the land of Ingary, where seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, Sophie Hatter attracts the unwelcome attention of the Witch of the Waste, who puts a curse on her. Determined to make the best of things, Sophie travels to the one place where she might get help - the moving castle which hovers on the nearby hills.

But the castle belongs to the dreaded Wizard Howl whose appetite, they say, is satisfied only by the hearts of young girls...

My thoughts:

I have to say that when going into this, I really assumed it was going to be a disappointment in comparison to the film because it's so bizarre that I had no idea how it could be put into words, but Diana Wynne Jones some how did it. It was pretty close to the film and in fact I think it has made the film experience better for me because there were some parts in the film that weren't explained too well, this is why you should always read the book first. I absolutely loved Calcifer just as much as I did in the film, and I adore Sophie as a character as well (I did a quiz to see what Ghibli character I am, and apparently I'm her so maybe that's why). I thought the storyline wasn't an epic thing that had me hanging on the edge for more (although I found it hard to put this book down), although it was really enjoyable and easy to get sucked into the world of magic (seriously I think I should just leave school and go to Hogwarts or just become a wizard or something, it's clearly destiny). I also loved the chapter names because they were written like Friends episode titles, for example Chapter One - In which Sophie talks to hats. If you changed 'in which' to 'the one where' you'd automatically have a story about magic set in a coffee shop with a bunch of 20-somethings. I also really liked the illustrations, although I still prefer the Ghibli interpretations of the characters' appearances.

Overall rating:

I gave this book a 4/5 on Goodreads, I did really enjoy it. It was well written, intriguing, and had some really great characters - I always found myself chuckling and smirking when I was reading this which probably made me look even more peculiar than I already am (I'm pretty certain people on the bus thought I was rather strange). I am really looking forward to reading the sequels!!

Have you read or seen Howl's Moving Castle?

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