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“A heart’s a heavy burden.”

What is the Book about?

Sophie has the great misfortune of being the eldest of three daughters. And everyone in Ingary knows that the eldest is destined to fail miserably should she ever leave home to seek her fortune. So, what must happen, happens: Sophie draws the wrath of a witch and is cursed.

Her only hope lies in the moving castle, home to the powerful but heartless wizard Howl, who might be able to break her curse. If only Sophie could tell him about it—but the magic placed on her prevents her from doing so.

And so Sophie becomes the housekeeper of the moving castle, trying to regain her old form amidst cynical fire demons and magical worlds.

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Rating
Plot ★☆☆☆☆
Characters ★★★★☆
World Building ★★★★☆
Atmosphere ★★★★★
Writing Style ★★★☆☆

Favourite Character
Calcifer

My thoughts while reading it

I came to this book the wrong way round. Like many, I first fell under the spell of Studio Ghibli’s whimsical, romantic, and emotionally chaotic film adaptation. It’s a film I’ve watched over and over – partly for the beautiful animation, partly for the strange, endearing love story at its heart. So when I finally picked up Diana Wynne Jones’ original novel, I was curious: would the source material deepen the magic or scatter it?

The answer is… complicated. Howl’s Moving Castle is undeniably brilliant. Witty, unpredictable, and brimming with charm, it’s the kind of fantasy that dances between absurdity and insight. Sophie, the cursed hat-maker-turned-old-woman, is a wonderfully unconventional heroine. Her transformation into an old lady liberates her in unexpected ways – she becomes bolder, braver, and surprisingly unapologetic, learning to take up space in a world that once taught her to stay small. It’s quietly empowering to watch her find strength not in being restored to youth, but in owning the self she becomes.

Then, of course, there’s Howl: a creature of contradictions. Vain, flamboyant, emotionally dramatic – and yet capable of sudden, almost shocking tenderness. He is both the storm and the calm after, infuriating and endearing in equal measure. The dynamic between him and Sophie sparkles with clever dialogue and unexpected vulnerability, even if neither of them quite knows what to do with it. Add Calcifer, the grumpy fire demon bound by secrets and bargains, and the book forms a core trio of such oddball energy that you can’t help but be swept along.

What impressed me most was the story’s wild, imaginative spirit. Diana Wynne Jones doesn’t write safe fantasy – she writes like someone unafraid to blend fairy tales, real-world references, absurd humour, and bursts of emotion all into one kaleidoscopic whole. The world of Howl’s Moving Castle is unpredictable and strange, shifting from cursed lands to magical doorways that open onto rainy streets in Wales, of all places. It never feels derivative – it feels alive, untamed, and thoroughly original.

And yet, that same unpredictability comes with a cost. The narrative structure is loose and sometimes dizzying. Plot threads meander, characters appear and disappear, and the stakes – while always present – don’t build in a traditional sense. By the time the ending arrives, it does so in a rush. After so much delightful chaos, the resolution feels almost too neat, too sudden, as if someone snapped their fingers and the story folded itself up before it could fully settle. I turned the last page and thought, Wait – that’s it?

The romantic thread between Sophie and Howl is similarly elusive. Their connection grows organically through shared space and sniping conversation, but the moments where that bond deepens are fleeting and easily missed. There’s no grand confession, no emotionally charged culmination – only a quiet shift in tone, buried in the banter. I found myself wishing for more emotional clarity, for a beat where they stopped pretending and simply saw each other. The novel asks you to trust in subtext, which can be beautiful – but also left me slightly adrift, especially after the film’s more expressive portrayal of their love.

And that, I think, is the key difference between the two versions of the story. The movie leans into sentiment and symbolism. It lingers in its emotions. The music swells, the skies open, and every quiet moment feels like it’s lit from within by nostalgia. The film gave me the ache of longing and the comfort of a dream you don’t want to wake from. The book, on the other hand, is cleverer, weirder, and somehow more real in its emotional restraint. It doesn’t hand you the warmth – it makes you work for it, dig beneath the jokes and spells to find something tender and true.

In the end, I think I will always love the film more – because it moved me in ways I didn’t expect, and because it offered a version of this story steeped in soft magic and emotional clarity. But I’m deeply glad the book exists. It gave me another Sophie, fiercer and funnier than I expected. It gave me a world stranger and richer than the screen could hold. And it gave me Howl, in all his maddening glory, exactly as chaotic and heartbreakingly human as he was meant to be.

I’ll always return to the film when I want to feel wistful. But when I want to feel wild, I think I’ll open the book again – and follow Sophie into the castle one more time, letting the door swing open on whatever strangeness comes next.

Reading Recommendation? ✓
Favourite? ✘