“ ‚Im the eldest!‘ Sophie shrieked. ‚I’m a failure!‘

‚Garbage!‘ Howl shouted. ‚You just never stop to think!‘ „

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

*spoiler free review*

Want something heartwarming, light, quirky and fun? Then I can just recommend you to read „Howl’s Moving Castle“ by Diana Wynne Jones. I think most of the people in my age class (20s to 30s) know the animated studio Ghibli film (I personally don’t know anyone who hasn’t watched that at some point). But I never knew that there was also a book, that the film was based on. Blew my mind! (Still asking myself if it’s jsut me that didn’t know about the book?) Well, I just finished the book yesterday and I can just say: I absolutely loved it, mind blewn a second time!

This book was not just wholesome, cozy and heartwarming, but also super funny. I laughed out loud every few pages, which is not the usual for me. In „Howl’s Moving Castle“ we follow the story of Sophie, eldest of 3 daughters, and because of being the eldest in the believe of their society being the one that will screw up. Their younger sisters will go out into the world searching their luck, but Sophie cannot imgagine something like that for herself. She will stay behind in the hat shop she works with her stepmom, and that will be basically it. Or so she thinks until an evil witch crosses her path and curses her. Sophie then makes her way out into the world and stumbles across a moving castle and its strange owner Howl, who will let her stay with him as a household help. Will Sophie be able to find a way to lift her curse? And will she be able to find a way of her own in her life?
As usual I keep the plot vague not to spoil anyone, but let me just say: Even though not that much happens and Sophie basically spends her time almost entirely in a room, this story was never boring. I found myself more often than not in the circle of „just one more chapter“ and it’s just awesome when that happens. There is also a kind of romantic story embedded, although the spotlight definitely is not really on that (it’s also kind of done in that same odd way than the rest of the plot).

I loved the characters. No one was pictured as perfect, exactly quite the opposite, but I could not just not love them all. Some of the characters were quite odd in their behaviour, but that fit the style of the writing and the whole narrative perfectly. At times Jones‘ writing style was almost dreamlike, logic was not the thing considered as too important and still it always made sense in its own way. It reminded me as well a lot of fairy tales (and you can never go wrong with a fairy tale in my opinion).

The world building was nice, not overly explained, but enough so that you got a good idea of the setting. There is magic in the world. The magic system was not explained a lot, which normally would be a fact that could bother me. But here it just added to the quirkiness of the story and fit it perfectly.

To sum it up: This was a 5 star read for me and I enjoyed my time with this book so much! I paired it with a darker read (Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, review will come soon) to balance the other one out and that worked very well. „Howl’s Moving Castle is the first book in a trilogy (which is found out to my utter delight) and I already ordered the following books. So, if you want to know more about the series, you don’t have to wait long 🙂

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 stars!

Trigger Warnings: Death, Parent Death, Mild Body Horror (Witch’s Curse), Lighter Physical Violence