![]() ![]() Playing with themes of light and darkness, this story feels like all purple and black when you read it. Jerome proved to be a weakling and coward, and Esmé a wickedly scheming mistress of Count Olaf, the children’s mortal enemy who in this story poses as an accomplished auctioneer. Esmé and Jerome Squalor were to be the Baudelaire’s final attempted guardians (not counting the “it takes a village” villagers in the next book), but they failed them as every guardian had failed them before, though this time through a betrayal almost as wicked as Olaf’s in Book the First. When we returned to this sixth story, everything started falling into place (well, as much as it can in an extended mystery series such as this). It was odd, actually, listening to The Vile Village (Book the Seventh) before this, because at that time, we had no idea who Esmé Gigi Geniveve Squalor was, and thus were highly surprised to meet her as Count Olaf’s girlfriend and partner in disguise! This is the only book in the whole series that we read out of order, skipping it for a time because the discs at our local library were getting refurbished. ![]()
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