Griffin's Castle by Jenny Nimmo

When Dinah moves with her mother to a falling-down house owned by her mother's boyfriend, Gomer Gwynne, she hopes that this will end up making a true family out of all of them: Gomer, her mother Rosalie, and herself.

But Gomer doesn't want Dinah. She's too frighteningly intelligent, and her mother spends too much time thinking about and caring for her and not for Gomer. He seems to wish he could leave Dinah behind so he and her mother could escape and be alone together. Dinah senses this, and hates him cordially. So even though he fixes up the house a little so they can stay there in relative comfort, he resents Dinah for being there.

Dinah has a chance to make friends at school, but she isn't really interested in being friends. Instead, one night she goes out walking in town on her own and sees a wall full of carved animals. Looking at one of them, a lionness, she sees it blink its eyes and she commands it down off the wall. It comes and follows her home to the castle. Soon, two more animals join her, a bear and a wolf, all from the wall, and encounters with two schoolmates, Barry Hughes and Jacob, a tall boy who perhaps isn't as smart as he is strong.

The two of them become her friends, and slowly get drawn into the magic that Dinah has released from the old house. But soon Dinah realizes that the magical animals from the wall aren't there to protect her, but to imprison her in the house. But why? What do they want from her, and what secrets are hidden in the depths of the house that Dinah has named Griffin's Castle for the broken Stone Griffin she found in the Garden. Why do the animals hate the stray cat who hangs out just beyond the gate, and why does he wish to befriend her?

To find out, Dinah decides to stay home in Griffin's Castle over Christmas. But will she be able to figure out the solution to her predicament all on her lonesome? Or has she finally bitten off rather more than she can chew?

This book looked like a new book, but actually its a reprint of an older book first published back in the 90's. And it was quite obvious to me, because this one had significant plotholes and a slapped on "happy ending" that didn't really fit the whole tone of the book. Add to that the ending which never answered fundamental questions about the plot, and you're looking at a book that could have used at least another 100 pages to flesh out the storyline.

Some of the places that the plot falls through is in leaving the readers wondering why Gomer, who is supposedly so in love with Dinah's mother Rosalie, would put his girlfriend in a house which is just about condemned, where the heat doesn't work and the power lines go out. Is this a place a powerful and rich man is going to stick the woman he loves? It didn't make much sense- there doesn't seem to be any reason he couldn't have found them a much nicer flat or moved them into a newer house, even one he didn't own. He's not married and I doubt there would be any comment on the two living together, so why the plot hole?

Worst of all is that the essential questions of why the animals want to trap Dinah in the house never gets answered, and nobody really seems to care. Dinah could have died, and perhaps she should have, but in the end, the timely appearance out of the blue of an old gentleman who turns out to be her grandfather ends up saving her, and she finally finds a place with someone who loves her and everything is happy and fine Baloney. It in no way fit the tenor of the book and came as a considerable shock from all that had gone before.

I don't recommend this book. Most of it is only okay and the ending fails to conform to the rest of the book in tone and comes as a considerable difference to what has already happened in the story. I can understand not knowing how to end a book, but this mishmash should never have been published. Do not read.