The Bad Beginning

            You will notice that this book is not entitled The Littlest Elf.

            There is a very good reason for that. First of all, nothing in this book even closely resembles an elf, or anything elf-like. Secondly, The Littlest Elf is a happy story filled with singing and dancing helpers of Santa who happen to be vertically-challenged, while The Bad Beginning is a terrible novel filled with terrible people who do terrible things to three smart and resourceful children.

            You will also notice that this book begins with a warning, which you’d better heed if you value anything in this life we are given. This book should not be called The Bad Beginning. The words “the” “bad” and “beginning” placed in that order infer that there is only a bad beginning. But no. There is a bad beginning, a bad middle, and a bad end.

It all began on a bad morning on Briny Beach, where three children receive word that their parents had died in a terrible fire, and their mansion melted into a pile of rubble. Newly orphaned Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are shipped off to their relative at the request of their deceased parents, only to find a series of unfortunate events waiting to attack the orphans. Their sly and sneaky guardian, Count Olaf, plots to get his grubby, dirt-under-the-nails hands on the famous Baudelaire fortune Violet is to inherit when she is of age. The children are forced to perform ridiculous chores for their guardian and his terrifying theater troop, receive abuse at the hands of the villainous count, and try to remain optimistic while their life slowly dwindles down the drain.           

 But when things can’t get possibly any worse, they do. The children know Count Olaf is plotting something, but they can’t find out what it is. They must rely on their inventing, reading, and biting skills to uncover their vile guardian’s plot to seize their stack of cash in the bank. But heed my warning: the dreadful, addicting lives of the Baudelaire orphans will compel you to read for days without stop until you have completed every miserable volume.

(Readers looking for happy books...don't look here.)