A Book Review of Lisa Fowler’s ‘Ready or Not’

Hello, everyone!!! Isabelle Knight back here again with another book review of another fantastic middle-grade book! ^^ Terribly sorry to have missed the last MMGM (I was utterly swamped with publishing and writing stuff), but I did manage to find time to read an ARC copy of a fantastic middle-grade book, and I enjoyed it so much!!! I read it all in one sitting!

Anyway, first off, I do have three pieces of news/updates! The first piece of news isn’t quite as good… (I’m saving the exciting pieces of news for last because I hate ending on a terribly sad note) and that is that, well… suffice to say it involves AI and a federal judge now making it legal for AI companies to train their AIs on books without the author’s permission…. Which is just absolutely dreadful! And hence why my friends and I may or may not have started a petition against that…. So do sign and share it please!

On a brighter note, the blog tour for my new middle-grade book (the last in the Enchantria series!! Eek!), Enchantria: The Last Hope, is shaping up nicely, and I have nearly all the blog tour dates confirmed and ready to be announced!!! I have a few more book bloggers to confirm with, but fingers crossed I’ll be able to announce all the blog tour dates by July 5th!

And I just reached 50K in my current WIP, Island Keepers, and I now officially have 16 chapters written and completed in the second draft!! Which feels like a lot. How in the skies did I even get here?? It’s such fun to write (though it’s torturous as well), but I’ve been slogging through, and (maybe?) have more than half the book done!!!! 🥳🥳🥳 I also finally figured out moodboards and with the use of Pinterest and Canva, I created a moodboard for my WIP on Canva and found a few lovely photos on Pinterest, and it’s quite inspiring when I’m in a writing slump!

And anyway, those are all the pieces of news I wanted to share with y’all first, and now I really have rambled on enough! The wonderful, soon-to-be-released middle-grade book I read was Ready or Not by Lisa Fowler! Huge thanks to Sally Apokedak at Parklesis Press for giving me the ARC copy, and also to Carol Baldwin who first introduced this book to me!

I thoroughly enjoyed Ready or Not! I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I first checked out the book blurb, but I really loved this book! The characters were so deep and real, and I love how this book handles the topic of handling huge changes, which I think is something that’s really important to see in books and stories. I loved reading about the main character, Gracie’s, antics so much, and I did have a few good laughs while reading this book! Though there were definitely a few instances where I just wanted to leap right into the story and shake Gracie by the shoulders and tell her, “Don’t do it!!!“

Ready or Not follows the adventures of Gracie Malone and her brother, Mitchell, after the events of their parents’ death. Gam, their citified grandmother, who the two siblings hardly even remember, comes to collect them. She wants the children to have a proper education and to be civilized, but all Gracie wants to do is remain on the farm, on Malone land, and when Gam finally agrees to a three-month trial run, Gracie is absolutely determined to show her how mature she really is and to prove that she doesn’t need to live with Gam in the city and can live by herself on the farm instead. Suffice to say, her determination to prove herself and stick with the ‘old ways’ her mother and father taught her leads to quite a few antics, which I’m sure lots of readers will enjoy reading about!

Again, I really enjoyed this book! I don’t normally read books like this, but I just had such fun with this one! Gracie has such a vivid personality, and the way she’s really determined to cling to the ‘old ways’ and get back to the farm is something that I think a lot of people who’ve been through a big change (like me) will relate to! She’s a very stubborn character (with a bit of a temper, in my opinion), and I know that stubborn characters like Gracie can be very hard to write about and make relatable! However, I think Lisa Fowler does just that! And while there were a few instances where I did wish to shake Gracie by the shoulders, I think Lisa Fowler does a fantastic job of really letting us into Gracie’s head and letting us see her thoughts and the way she’s processing this huge change, which was so so relatable! She is definitely a character who I’ll remember for quite some time!

I also really loved Gam’s character! (or Marie, as Gracie calls her throughout much of the book, since she thoroughly refuses to call her Gam) There’s just really something about her that really does make her very relatable and all throughout the book, you can really see how she’s genuinely trying to help Gracie and Mitchell, tough as it is! Wally, the blue and gold macaw, was such a fun character as well! He added so much humor to the book, though I’m not quite sure I’d like to have a Wally in real life! 😅 As much fun and humor as he adds to the book, he’s got quite a full mouth of words to say! And they might not always be nice!

The plot of this book was really good too! It was very fast-paced but never rushed, and I think the pacing was balanced really well!! It really gives us enough time to see Gracie’s thoughts, feelings, emotions, and how she’s processing all of this, while still keeping a relatively fast and fun pace as we see all the antics Gracie gets up to! And there are quite a lot! Digging a root cellar and chopping wood, for instance… And I won’t say any more, lest I give spoilers!

I really loved the setting of this book as well! Much of it takes place in the gated community where Gam lives, and the first two chapters (I don’t quite remember if it was just the first chapter or the first two chapters) take place on the Malone farm. Already in those first few chapters, you really get to see Gracie’s character and how much the farm means to her! And during the rest of the book in the gated community, you can really see how different it is from Gracie’s previous lifestyle. Everything was really detailed, and you could really see how everything worked in the gated community and how different it is, and it really did feel like I was right there was Gracie!

My favorite scene in this book is really hard to say, because Gracie gets up to so many antics, and I love them all! But perhaps one of my favorites might be when Gracie attempts to dig out a root cellar! It was such fun to read and definitely very memorable!!! There’s also all the scenes where everybody is just completely misunderstanding what’s going on in Gam’s house, and while I won’t spoil anything, suffice to say it did indeed cause quite a conundrum!

I also really did like the whole formatting of the book!!! On every chapter title page, there’s a sort of fun graphic (a treehouse when they’re at the farm, a row of houses when they’re at the gated community, etc.) It’s nothing too fancy, but it just made it look so fun, and I always love it when books come with these fun kinds of formatting!

Lisa Fowler’s writing style is also such fun to read as well!!! It really shows Gracie’s perspective on everything that’s happening really well, and there was never a moment that lagged! She certainly does a fantastic job with building character dynamics as well!

So yeah — I think this probably wraps up my review of Ready or Not! It’s a fantastic middle-grade book that I’d recommend to anyone: younger middle-graders, older middle-graders, or even adults looking for a fun read! It has a lot of good themes, especially on the topic of change, and I think that a lot of kids (adults as well!) shall definitely enjoy it!!

So yes! Thank you guys so much for coming, I hope you enjoyed this review, and I also hope that you’ll check out Ready or Not when it comes out on July 21, 2025!!! And if you enjoyed this review, then be sure to check out Marvelous Middle Grade Monday as well!!! Adios, farewell, and I shall see you again next time,

-Isabelle