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    Escape from the Isle of the Lost
    Escape from the Isle of the Lost
    Escape from the Isle of the Lost
    Audiobook4 hours

    Escape from the Isle of the Lost

    Written by Melissa de la Cruz

    Narrated by Sophia Carson

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Mal, Evie, Jay, and Carlos may have once been the baddest of the bad, but their wicked ways are (mostly) behind them—and now graduation is almost here! But before the seniors can don their custom-designed caps and gowns, courtesy of Evie, they’ve got an epic plan to put into action. There are tons of villain kids on the Isle of the Lost who are eager for their chance to come to Auradon Prep—even Celia, Dr. Facilier’s trickster daughter, wants in on the deal!—and Mal’s crew is using their upcoming visit to the Isle to help make it happen. But Auradon’s biggest threat is still at large … Trapped on the other side of the barrier, Uma is more desperate than ever to get her long-awaited revenge against Mal. When she discovers an underground lair belonging to Hades, god of the underworld, Uma realizes she’s found the perfect partner in crime. Together, they can defeat Mal, bring down the barrier, and escape the Isle for good. Mal and Uma have a score to settle, and they’ll come face to face in an explosive underwater battle that could determine the fates of Auradon and the Isle of the Lost once and for all.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJun 4, 2019
    ISBN9781501989629
    Escape from the Isle of the Lost
    Author

    Melissa de la Cruz

    Melissa de la Cruz is the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Publishers Weekly internationally bestselling author of many critically acclaimed novels, including The Isle of the Lost: A Descendants Novel and the Summer on East End series. Her Blue Bloods series has sold over three million copies. She is also the author of The Never After series, which includes The Thirteenth Fairy, and The Stolen Slippers. Melissa grew up in Manila and now lives in Hollywood, USA.

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    Reviews for Escape from the Isle of the Lost

    3.5/5

    149 ratings15 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is the best book ever . Now can you spot the difference??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ,love Charlie Cameron Craig Dishler.§????????????
    • 3/5
      This audiobook skips a good portion of the last half of the book. It skips at least 5 chapters. Needed to be fixed.
    • 4/5
      Didn’t you know? Villains have kids too.

      Twenty years ago when Belle married her Beast they rounded up all the villains and banished them… to the Isle of the Lost. During their banishment these notorious villains have been raising their young, preparing them for the day when they’d escape the magic dome allowing them to finally get their revenge.

      This book, being the prequel to the 2015 hit TV movie Disney Descendants, introduces us to the four main villain children – Mal, Evie, Jay and Carlos – and gives us a glimpse of what their life was like before the movie. The food is rotten, the houses are shoddy and the parent-child relationships are nothing like the ones in Auradon. What do you expect? They’re villains and they pretty much only see their children as a way to carry on their evil legacies… assuming they get off the island eventually.

      The book also gives us a glimpse of Prince Ben in Auradon and his training to becoming King once he turns sixteen. There are not many chapters dedicated to his character, but we do get to see in which ways he takes after his parents, King Beast and Queen Belle.

      Meanwhile, on the isle Mal is given an assignment from her mother (Maleficent) to retrieve her treasured scepter, which holds the Dragon Eye, from the other side of the island. However, there’s a catch – the eye is cursed. The first person to touch it and ‘wake the dragon’ will be cursed to sleep for a thousand years (classic Maleficent). Enlisting the help of her three acquaintances (because villains don’t have friends) Mal conducts a plan that will help them retrieve the eye and she’ll be able to prove once and for all that she is as evil as her mother.

      So… this book is definitely a great read. I like that we get to see more into the lives of the villain children before they go to Auradon in the movie. However, there are some differences between the book and movie that irk me a little, but isn’t that always the case?

      First of all, the villain children are not as close in the book as they make them out to be in the movie, and neither are the parents. In the book we learn that Mal hates Evie for an incident that happened when they were six, and just as well their parents, Evil Queen and Maleficent aren’t exactly fond of each other. In the movie, it’s completely opposite. It seems as though EQ and Maleficent are best friends, along with Jafar and Cruella De Vil.

      Now that I think about it, that’s really the only thing that bugs me between the book and movie.

      I guess it works out though, because during their quest to find the Dragon Eye we see the four villains-in-training doing something they never thought possible – bond.

      In any case, if you are at all interested in reading about the children of some of the most famous villains I’d definitely recommend this book… and the movies of course. It’s up to you of course whether you want to read the book first or see the movie, since you don’t necessarily need to read the book before watching the movie.
    • 4/5
      This book focuses on the offspring of four of the most notorious neer-do-wells in the Disney universe. Mal is the daughter of the evil Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, Evie is daughter of the vain Evil Queen from Snow White, Jay is the son of the wizard Jafar from Aladdin, and Carlos is the son of Cruella De Vil from 101 Dalmatians. These four teens, their parents, and other villains have been eternally banished to the Isle of the Lost by edict of King Beast who rules the United States of Auradon.

      A separate plot line involves Ben, the son of King Beast and Queen Belle. As his sixteenth birthday approaches, he prepares to take the crown and become king. But the transition will not be easy, as he inherits his father’s troubles with the Disney sidekicks who feel they have been treated unfairly.

      The author definitely knows her Disney neer-do-wells and presents them in a light that doesn’t negate the fact that they’re not heroes but doesn’t make them psychotic and bloodthirsty either.

      Mal learns from her mother, Maleficent, that the key to true darkness, the Dragon’s Eye, is located inside her scepter in the forbidden fortress on the far side of the island. The eye is cursed, and whoever retrieves it will be knocked into a deep sleep for a thousand years. But Mal has a plan to capture it. She’ll just need a little help from her “friends.”

      This book is very clever and each chapter is written from a different character's point of view. I really enjoyed this story and plan to read the other books in the series.
    • 3/5
      HATED IT, these pri-madonnas and their bad attitude about parties and just being nasty. It is Disney Meats Mean Girls - Woopie Doo!! This is horrible.
    • 3/5
      I read this to see if they would make good presents for a Descendents crazy 8 year old. I guess I am not the target audience, but I really did find that they dragged a lot. This is a prequil, before Mal and Evie are friends, and it's the story of how they become friends in the first place.
    • 3/5
      Wow. Just wow. Trite plot, cliched characters, horrible writing, and horrific editing. If you were to take the movies, divide by twelve, and then subtract the music you have something approaching the sheer cringiness of this book.
    • 3/5
      My heart....is shattered. I had such high hopes for this book! I mean, I have fangirled over this book since it first came out, I wanted it so bad. Now, I wish I was still in the shadows, living in book ignorance. It was a okay book, don't get me wrong. But it lacked so much. I loved all the characters except Mal. AND MAL IS NORMALLY MY FAVORITE!!! So how cruddy is that!I felt like she was not a strong character here. If anything, she whined way to much. She's all talk and no action. It bugged me so many people feared her when she did nothing at all. From how she talks, she would be terrified if someone actually challenged her. I feel like the other characters were more stronger than Mal was, which doesn't make sense because Mal is really the actual main character. I love how the story went back and explained so much though, it helps the movie make sense. (Yeah, yeah, I know. I saw the movie first *gasp in horror* aaaaand the movie was better IMO)Melissa de la Cruz is really a good author, but in every book I have read from her, something is missing from them all. That extra punch, the "UMPH!" But yet she always writes well enough so keep readers coming back. It's truly a rare talent. I can't wait to get my hands on book 2.
    • 4/5
      It delivers what I asked for -- some cheesy campy Disney stuff just like the movie. The best part is it expands on the Descendants universe (such as it is). We didn't see much of life on Villain Island, but that's remedied here. They go to school, they have parties, they interact with their parents, and plan pranks/tricks on each other. The books gives what a low budget made-for-TV movie couldn't.Plotwise, it's by-the-numbers YA, showing how the fab four became friends (it was a quest). No one likes school, parents are mostly non-factors, and the kids get archetypes that didn't exist in the movie (for example, Cruella's son is the "smart one", creating devices like Donatello.) Nothing really new, except occasional interjections by the author that evoke memories of bad fan fiction (as you can tell, I did not like that part). But it's not too slow, and the novel really thrives in the second half, when they all get together. The author uses the chemistry between the characters to its full advantage. Given the absolute crap from non-children's Disney books I've been reading lately (The Beast Within, A Frozen Heart), this is a life-affirming change of pace. I'm glad they're sticking with this author because she seems right for the series.
    • 2/5
      I read this book because I enjoyed the movie. To illustrate why I didn't like this book very much, I guess I should go over why I liked the movie.I liked the movie mostly because the idea was a good one. Villains trapped on an island with their children who didn't do anything to deserve incarceration? That's an incredible idea. It was made more interesting by the fact that the children must have been born on the island. I mean, the villains were imprisoned for twenty years, but the kids were only about sixteen. The other thing I liked about the film was the acting. Sure, sometimes the side characters felt forced, but the four principle characters were played by very good actors. I also liked the moment when Lonnie was surprised and heartbroken to learn that the villain kids were not loved by their parents. Disney's Descendants wasn't what I'd call a good movie. A lot of the plot points were really stupid and the parents didn't seem like the evil villains we were asked to believe they were, but the idea was a really good one.So why didn't I like the book? Well, they didn't seem to be in bad enough shape. In spite of their impeccably fashionable costumes, in the 'Rotten to the Core' song we get a decent glimpse of how much of a slum the island is. There are people sleeping in little more then warehouses. There are people who seem like good people just trying to get by (that the four main characters victimize.) The MCs don't appear to belong with their fashionable clothes, and during one of Evie's verses she's standing among a bunch of beautiful like-new scarves that obviously don't belong in the scene. But we still get an idea of the poverty and suffering on the island. In the book, the villains are not scrounging for food or suffering for lack of clothing. They only receive the leftovers that Auradon doesn't want, but there is still more than enough food. The villains even care enough to give their kids schooling (in the arts of being evil, but honestly I didn't think there would be a school at all.) Given the fact that we are expected to believe that the villains don't care about their kids, it seems stupid that they'd care to make them go to school. I feel like they'd just expect their kids to learn their wickedness by watching them, but why would they go through the effort of enforcing school for children they didn't care about?I am also rather skeptical about an island full of villains electing anyone, even Maleficent, to be their leader. If they're all as self-serving and terrifying as we're led to believe that they are, then none of them would want anyone but themselves to be the leader, though they might bow to the scariest one's demands, I don't think they'd actively call them leaders.The other problem with this was that Cruella was the cruellest parent (at least that we've seen) on the island. She neglects Carlos, and forces him to clean the house and take care of her and her clothes. She treats him like a slave. And in the film Carlos was the only one who said actually expressed interest in going to Auradon--or rather, interest in getting away from the isle and his mother. We see Jafar, Evil Queen and Maleficent saying mean and nasty things to their kids, but they never do more then speak nastily to them. I know that both the book and the movie are for kids so I can understand that they didn't want to scare the targeted audience with descriptions of parental abuse, but c'mon. These are evil villains who we're asked to believe don't care about their kids, and don't care about anything but themselves. We're told that these villains are the worst in the world, but we're never really shown it. Evie's mother even seems to care about her a bit--mostly because she's beautiful, but still.I also thought that the four characters didn't altogether match the impression we'd gotten of them in the movie. The movie starts with the four of them terrorizing the less evil citizens of the island, but, while the book ends with the author saying that the characters ran off to terrorize the others on the island, only Mal and Jay had ever done that before. Carlos was bullied by the other children as well as his mother, and it seems highly unlikely that he would just start doing the bullying. Evie seems to have a bit too much propensity for good in her. She wasn't taught to be honest, but even though she lies, her first instinct seems to be to help others (like Carlos,) and her line in Rotten to the Core ("I broke your heart? I made you hurt?") doesn't seem to fit her at all because she spent most of her life isolated, and she hadn't any experience breaking hearts even if she were disposed to do so. The four of them had only just become (almost) friends and I didn't really think that they would have been comfortable wreaking havoc together so soon after Mal decided to stop hating Evie (also, in the movie, Evie's not inviting Mal to her birthday party was mentioned in passing, as something that maybe bothered Mal a little bit over the years, but not something that had festered and caused her to attempt vengeance on Evie as it was portrayed in the book.) Because Mal and Jay were (almost) friends at the beginning of the book, and they were the trouble makers, they are the only ones who's behavior in the film matches their behavior in the book.The author also should have watched a few more Disney films. I didn't find many errors, but the most egregious one was that Perdi and Pongo were complaining about having to pay four 101 college educations when they only had 99 puppies. They were dogs numbers 100 and 101 (and if you read the book there were only 97 puppies because there were 4 adult dogs, Pongo, Mrs. Pongo, Perdita and Perdita's mate.) Even the fact that the dogs were complaining about anything didn't fit with the world we were given in the film. Not with the way that Dude acted more or less like a normal dog, and no one treated him like a person. I also don't understand why Anastasia and Drizella (and their children) are on the island. Even if you disregard the sequels where Anastasia gets a happy ending, (not to mention Iago in the Aladdin sequels) Anastasia and Drizella are guilty of nothing more than bullying. Behavior we see from everyone in Auradon--from Audrey, daughter of Sleeping Beauty, to Chad, son of Cinderella, to the one science teacher who took Evie's mirror in the film. and none of those characters are sent to the Isle of the lost for their behavior. The last error that I was more inclined to forgive was that Doc said something about his son, Doug, when in the Descendants movie, Doug was Dopey's son.I don't like very many of the Auradonian characters. In the film I liked Lonnie well enough, and in the Wicked World YouTube show I started to like Jane better, but I didn't really like Ben and Ben in the book is just as dull and uninteresting as in the film. I also found myself feeling rather annoyed with how stupid both Belle and Beast behaved. Beast seemed stupider, but Belle being a book-nerd, it was more obvious with her. No matter how I look at it in either movie or book, it's beyond stupid that someone would be crowned king while his parents were still alive, while he was still in high school. It would make far more sense if they waited until he graduated high school, and maybe college.Another problem with the book (and the movie, but it's more obvious in the book) is the question of who the villain kids' other parent is. Especially because Maleficent keeps telling Mal she's just as human, weak and good as her father. Um, Mal is sixteen and Maleficent has been imprisoned on the isle for twenty years. All of the characters parents must have both parents among the prisoners of the Isle, (and what good person would create a child with someone they consider evil.) After I watched the film I thought that it would have been good if we'd seen villain children with two different villains for parents. I mean, Jay and Mal already act like siblings, so why not make Mal's dad be Jafar and Jay's mom be Maleficent?I will probably give Return to the Isle of the Lost a go, but after this book, I don't really expect to like it that much. And don't get me wrong, the Descendants movie isn't great. It's a corny, half baked plot, and poorly created world, with (mostly) good actors, but a really good original idea. I liked the movie because it led me to imagine what (at least in my head) seems like a much better story using the same idea of imprisoned villains, not because it was a good film. The book didn't add anything to the poorly created world and, if anything, it took away some of the things that had been left to the imagination, that could have been better. The plot was even worse than the movie, and the characters didn't seem to fit well with what we'd seen of them in the film.
    • 3/5
      The evil villains must be kept somewhere…...this is their story of exile. The story begins with the reading learning that King Beast and Belle live in Auradon where everything is beautiful. Their son, Ben, will soon be king, so he is learning how to lead and is supposed to listen to the grievances from Grumpy. He doesn’t do well with this first meeting. In fact, he feels like he wants more and dreams of a girl with purple hair with whom he is friends. This novel, however, is not about Auradon exactly or the boy exactly. It’s the story of the evil villains’ children from fairy tales--Jafar, Maleficent, etc.--who were exiled from the United Kingdom of Auradon and imprisoned on the Isle of the Lost. Mal, daughter of Maleficient, has purple hair and is known as being one of whom to fear. She worries that she isn’t as evil as she is supposed to be. Ten years ago, there was a party. The fairest of them all--Evil Queen--held a birthday party for her daughter but failed to invite Mal. A feud ensued between Evil Queen and Maleficent, so for ten years Evie has never attended school or been out of her home. She must now attend school and worries that Mal will do something to her. Jay, son of Jarar, is a thief and Mal’s friend. Well, friend is a different word here on the Isle of the Lost. Everything is evil and there aren’t friends, so he’s the closest thing one can have to a friend. Carlos De Vil, son of Cruella De Vil, likes to tinker with objects and is basically his mother’s slave, protecting her prized possessions, her fur coats. Everything comes to a head when Mal decides to get even by having a party and not inviting Evie. She commands Carlos to have a party at his house. Upon further reflection, Mal changes her mind and invites Evie to give her a hard time. Carlos saves Evie from the trap-infested fur coat room and shows her his invention. When it emits a light, something happens. When Mal arrives home, Maleficient’s bird has appeared. They surmise the light put a hole in the dome over their island, letting some magic in. Maleficient sends Mal for her Dragon Eye scepter. She’ll need help, so she takes Carlos, Jay, and Evie with her.This is a clever story using the children of famous villains, but it was too over the top for me. Everything is exaggerated. The next book should go into Ben’s story more because Mal and Ben will eventually have to meet. Will magic be unleashed, leaving Auradon at the mercy of evil? It’s cute, so if you like a different “take” on fairy tale, retellings, tell me what you think of this one.
    • 3/5
      You can definitely tell this is a middle grade book, but I did quite enjoy parts of it. Mentions of the villains made me nostalgic (in a good way!) for the movies I grew up on. Overall I did enjoy the book even if I did find it juvenile (which isn't a bad thing!). I would probably read it again. A good prequel to the movie. 3.75 out of 5 stars.
    • 3/5
      The prequel to the upcoming Descendants movie on Disney Channel. It basically gives the backgrounds on the villain's children and how their parents have been raising them and what life is like on the Isle of the Lost that the villains were all sent to in punishment. Nice to have the information since the movie will take place at the prep school the heroes' children attend. I was kind of iffy on the movie b/c Disney live action can be overly cheeseball and the adverts for it have made it look cheeseball but now I think I'm kind of excited about it again.
    • 5/5
      5/5 hands down. If you're a Once Upon A Time TV Series/Disney nut/magical geek like myself, then definitely grab this book (as if you already needed convincing after you've SEEN THAT BEAUTIFUL BOOK JACKET - what the heck is that?!). I had originally intended grabbing another book that day, but the cover of this book drew me in and once I read that jacket and found out it was about some of Disney's best evil villain's children - what?! SUPER DUPER SOLD! Definitely a younger read, but it's fun. Fiction/Fantasy/Middle-Grade.

      I absolutely love the idea of this book! And not only are there the 4 main characters I mentioned above, but there's random "guest" appearances throughout the story and every time they introduced another, I would just "EEEEEE!!" with excitement! This was definitely a fun blast-to-the-past read for me. **Fun Ashley Fact: I found SO many errors from spelling to grammar to extra words.. doesn't take away from the book but it'll make you giggle. See if you can spot them!
    • 3/5
      I just finished reading The Isle of the Lost, which has been getting a lot of hype in local bookstores and reading groups around my area. I kept seeing it on display everywhere, so I grabbed a copy to see what all the hoopla was about. Well, honestly, I was not all that impressed. The writing seemed kind of off... I just never felt myself fall into the story and forget I was reading a book. The characters lacked depth and felt flat to me. It felt like the maybe the author was too restricted by trying to work off of the Disney villans, which aren't the most fleshed out characters in the films. The premise of them being sent to an isolated island in which there is no magic to live just didn't feel like a great premise, especially when you add in the fact that they had children who grew up within this punishment environment in which they ate rotten food and survived on stuff that wasn't wanted by the good people in Auradon that was ruled by King Beast and Queen Belle. It felt inhumane, despite the fact that they were villans, and it felt downright abusive to their kids who were innocent and shouldn't have to suffer for what their parents did, over which they had zero control. When you add to that the fact that the parents all seem to treat their children so horribly and the kids are aware that they aren't really loved and are constantly being told they are a disappointment and often treated more like slaves by the parents (in addition to the horrible environment of where they are living) it all just feels wrong.;..too wrong for the lighthearted treatment the author tries to give it in the book. It goes beyond the kids living with the expectations of their legendary parents and not measuring up, or not being allowed to be who they really are or think about what they might want for themselves...it all just feel depressing. Even the Quest feels more like abuse than an adventure, and the plight of Prince Ben (son of Beast & Belle) in Auradon, isn't a whole lot nicer except for the fact that he lives in a luxurious environment. I thought that the author might try to build up the life stories of the villans more in an attempt to make them more sympathetic and show how they ended up on their path of evil, and although that happens a little bit in the case of Maleficent, it's far too little to overcome the narcissim and nastiness of her character in how she treats her daughter. There just isn't much to like in any of the parents who are so one dimensional that they barely do more than repeat the same cliched evil phrases over and over. Perhaps more character development will happen in the future, and I may try the second book in the series to see if it get better, but it was certainly much more of a disappointing read than I expected, and upon learning that there is going to be a tv movie or something based on it, it almost felt like a rushed ad for the movie or was counting heavily on the nostalgia of Disney fanatics rather than quality of a well written story.