I read this when I was in my mid 20s, so I wasn’t the target audience. It might have been nostalgia, but I compared it against similar things I’d read as a child and it came out poorly. Derivative and twee. I understand that as the series went on it got less twee but I didn’t bother reading any more.

I will say that at the time when it got really popular I thought it was great that so many kids were getting into reading books, so for that it deserves some credit, I guess.