League of Beastly Dreadfuls #2: The Dastardly Deed by Holly Grant

My name is Anastasia, and my Aunt Penny just told me I'm a morfo. Maybe I'll be able to change into a guinea pig like my dad, but my aunt says most morflings can become bats. I'll need to wait until I change for the first time to find out. I discovered my grandmother is queen of the morflings and lives in a secret village hidden from CRUD. Unfortunately, being related to a queen means I'm required to live and behave like a princess, whether I want to or not. I must find a way to find my missing father, and my grandfather is probably the only one who can do it. However, he hasn't been seen since the infamous Dastardly Deed, and everyone around here, except me, learned about it in school textbooks. So, my first job is to find my grandfather, the king, even though no one else has been able to do it in the past 250 years. Luckily, the Beastly Dreadfuls are back together to help me.

The narrator's voice speaks directly to readers and presents an amusing angle to the descriptions. Anastasia's aunt teaches her proper princess behavior by having her walk on banana peels while balancing books on her head and then teaches her the proper etiquette for eating pastries. Her cousin is a proper princess and uses her position to be a thorn in Anastasia's life. She's a brat. The Dastardly Deed and the resulting disappearance of the king becomes Anastasia's focus and offers a mystery to be solved. The fact that no one else has been able to find him only increases the drama. My main concern with the book is how the story meanders around and doesn't move along as much as I'd like. Not much really happens in the first three-fourths of the plot with most of the attention being on Anastasia's adjustment to the palace and school. The last part describes the actual efforts to find the king and leads the story toward the sequel. However, I don't feel like the plot line moved much from page one to the end. I'm hoping the sequel will allow more progress to be made.