I would love to give it a higher rating as there is a lot about the story I liked. However, there was a lot of echoing and there is so many instances of the author not trusting the reader, giving redundant and repeating information about aspects of the story. I would argue that it is more than what would be necessary in even middle grade fiction. It would have made the story flow better and not pull readers out to have edited that out and tightened up extraneous info.