Dayla goes to Turkey with her father. While her father's working she decides to explore her family's old ancestral home. She finds a bottle of ink beneath the floorboards. The bottle's jinn that she summons ends up sending her on an adventure through time. This book is magical, filled with wonderful characters and teaches children about family, friendship, and chasing your dreams.

This book was definitely a cute read and read sort of like a Fable. I've been falling in love with middle grade books again over last year and I'm glad I was able to to read this one. The writing was great and the imagery was even better.

This is a wonderful book for young readers to enjoy. It is very cute and easy to read, and the story is captivating enough to keep young minds entertained.

Dalya is sick of trying to get her fathers attention. He has taken her all the way to the home he grew up in to spend the summer with her but he still cant stay away from his work and is constantly picking up his phone. Dalya decides to explore and stumbles across a strange looking cat and an ink bottle. When she makes a wish to go back home something changes and she finds herself in an unfamiliar place, searching for a way home and back to her father.

Dalya discovers something that she did not know she would miss when she is trapped in the past as a cat. She realizes how important family is and how important her relationship with her dad is regardless of how strained it is at this time.

The amount of support that friends can become in our lives is so touching and this story really showcases how much friends can get you through in hard times. how much friends are willing to go through and risk in order to help out.

Its so touching to see how the introduction of such a friend into someones life can change the course of their entire future. Seeing it firsthand in the outcome of the family house.

This was a very cute book that was easy and exciting to read. I believe that this would be a good book for classroom discussion and read along that children would enjoy.

Dalya travels to Istanbul with her father to visit her grandmother, who lives in a mansion that has fallen into disrepair. Dalya doesn't really want to be there. She finds a magic ink bottle and is turned into a cat. She doesn't really want to be a cat either. Hard to get into a story where the main character isn't really likeable or interesting. The story has a fable or fairy tale-like quality and might have worked better as a picture book.

When Dalya was little her parents divorced because her father worked a lot as a doctor. One summer Dalya's father takes her on a trip to his home country of Istanbul to help his Aunt sell the family home. She is not at all happy, but when she gets there something magical happens. I loved how the story weaved the power of friendship, family, and the meaning of the word home. I highly recommend to those who love magical realism is a sprinkle of fantasy.

Thanks to Capstone and Netgalley for an eArc of this book.

I requested and received an e-ARC of this book from J.M. Evenson and Capstone through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely loved this book; I love that this book originally started as a bedtime story for the author’s daughter and morphed into this fantastic tale of Istanbul and family. Would recommend this book to everyone!

When twelve-year-old Dalya and her father (Baba) head to Turkey for the summer, she’s not expecting much. She’s not spent a lot of time with her father since her parents divorced six years ago, and she’s not thrilled at all to be heading to his homeland with him now. Her father’s not told Dalya much about Turkey, or their family living there, so when they get to her great aunt’s crumbling mansion, she wants to rush to the nearest hotel and have nothing to do with any of it.
Once inside, Dalya can see that the inside matches the outside, and after being told not to go up to the second floor, she’s off to her room for the night. While there, she meets up with a gorgeous white cat who has different colored eyes and a black tipped tail.
Only things aren’t as they seem with the cat. The next day, Dalya follows the strange cat upstairs, and is yelled at when she’s discovered by her father. The second floor isn’t safe, and no one should be up there. But what her father and great aunt don’t know is that the cat showed Dalya a secret, one that she has inside her pocket. One that will eventually lead her on a grand adventure. After reading the slip of paper she found, she made a wish. But as you know, wishes from jinn (genies) are far from straightforward and Dalya has been sent back in time, and has been changed into something else.
Can she find the jinn who granted the wish and be sent back home? Or will she be forced to live in the past with her relative, a dog, and a rat?
I absolutely devoured this story. Full of magic and adventure, you don’t want to stop reading. And the fact that it’s set in the beautiful land of Istanbul, is just the icing on an already stunning cake. This story is so good, from the writing, to the characters, to the plot. You root for Dalya, Mina, Azman, and Boz as they’re led out onto a grand adventure to not only help Dalya, but all the rest in their own way. This story does have a little of The Wizard of Oz wrapped up in it, but it’s a great overall story.
Are you a fan of fantastical tales full of creatures great and small? Then head out with Dalya, Mina, Azman, and Boz as they discover the wonders of Istanbul, and the things their hearts desire.
**I received an ARC of this story from Netgalley and this is my honest and voluntary review.

Set in Istanbul, Dalya's story of wishing for home is a delightful homage to "The Wizard of Oz." The creepy old family house does not appeal to Dalya when she first arrives. Despite being forbidden to go higher than the ground floor, Dalya follows a mysterious cat and finds a magic ink bottle. She wishes for home and wakes up as a cat in her great grandmother's Istanbul. Thus begins Dalya's quest to find the jinn of the ink bottle and find her way home. Along the way she makes friends with her great grandmother Mina as well as a bashful dog and a rat with magician ambitions. The opportunity is there for Dalya to right a wrong in her family. But how will she accomplish it? How can she get back home? There were some bits that obviously pointed to Oz like Aunt Sibel = Wicked Witch of the East. Others not so obvious like the squirrels = flying monkeys? It is a satisfying tale and I think it will appeal to fans of Erin Hunter and the Sara Mlynowski.

Thank you to Capstone and NetGalley for a DRC in exchange for an honest review.

I recently received an arc of Dalya and the Magic Ink Bottle and I believe I’ve fallen in love with this genre. This story contains all the things I’ve loved reading about my whole life. There’s talking animals, magical spells and all the turmoil of being an adolescent wrapped into one adventure.

The story starts when Dalya makes a wish to go home and finds herself transformed into a cat and transported 100 years in the past. From there she goes on all sorts of adventures throughout the city of Istanbul and learns more about her own culture and heritage. It’s a heartwarming story that explores family, friendship and love.

The story itself had such a great pacing, each scene flowed naturally into each other and I was shocked when it ended because I had gotten so into the story and wasn’t ready for it to be over. I enjoyed all the descriptions of the settings, each felt lush and tailored to fit the current mood of the story. Plus, there was so much great food! If an author doesn’t describe mouthwatering food in detail to make me hungry, I don’t want to read the story.

I was initially hesitant to read the story because I don’t usually like the human turning into an animal trope but after reading this story, I would definitely give this trope more chances. Evenson made the experience of being a cat sound incredibly fun if not a little chaotic. Seeing Dalya go from being a loner, to someone with friends and could be more self-reflective was a fantastic development. I think a lot of readers will really enjoy Dalya’s progression throughout the novel; by the end I was in tears because it was so sweet.

Overall I really enjoyed this novel because it reminded me that reading should be for fun. Books don’t need to be huge convoluted adult fantasy to move me to tears, sometimes all you need is a beautiful story about a girl inspiring confidence in others and learning about family along the way.

Dalya and the Magic Ink Bottle is a fun, magical adventure set in Turkey. When her father needs to return to Turkey to help his aunt sell the family home, Dalya isn't thrilled. She would much rather spend her summer on a cruise with her mother. Upon arrival, Dalya immediately believes the old house is haunted and is wary of what they will find within. When her father begins spending more time working than spending time with her, Dalya defies the house rules and wanders upstairs to follow a mysterious cat. In one of the abandoned bedrooms, Dalya finds a magic ink bottle and wishes to return home. But, wishes don't always come true in the way we'd like and instead of returning to the U.S., she finds herself transformed into a cat and sent back in time. There she meets Mina, a young girl desperate for a friend and at the mercy of a cruel aunt. Together, the two become fast friends and work together, with the help of some other magical creatures, to help both Mina and Dalya find their way home.
The story moves quickly and is full of magic and adventure. Dalya is a very relatable character and I enjoyed her journey of friendship, learning her family's history, and the magical world of the animals that live around the family's home.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own.

Great book that really delves into the meaning of friendship and what home really is.

Dalya is spending the summer in Istanbul with her father to learn more about where he came from. Dalya goes on an incredible journey and finds her connection to Istanbul.

I really adore this book. I love the setting in Istanbul and how it feels like a magical place. The characters were great and I loved how their friendship was built up during the book. The book shows the meaning of friendship and what home really is. It was a great fast read with some good fantasy elements.

I really liked this book! The story was very interesting, and the time travel was a very good twist. Since Dalya changed the past, it changed the present at the end of the book, but the cat was still in her grandmother's picture at the beginning of the story; does that mean the book started out in an alternate timeline where Dalya failed? I love books that bring up these sort of questions, and would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves magic, talking animals, and themes of friendship and family.

Dalya is in Istanbul with her father. He plans on selling the ancestral home of his family. It's in such bad shape she can't imagine it selling. Then despite his promises, he's always on the phone talking about work. Her aunt is boring. What can she do for fun?

Capstone and Net Galley let me read this book for review (thank you). It will be published September 1st.

Her aunt tells her about a family curse. She's not sure if she believes her or not. But when her aunt settles down to take a nap, she heads up to the attic, where she was told not to go. There she finds an ink bottle with messages inside. It says it can grant her wish if she rubs it.

She rubs it and wishes to go home. She never imagined she's find herself as a cat years ago in the same house when it was almost new. The woman tries to chase her out but the girl living there hides her and lies. The cat finds out the aunt is keeping all the things sent to the girl and sells them. She tells the girl her father has forgotten her...

It starts with the cat and the girl, then they add a rat, and then a dog. They are looking for the magician that made the ink bottle but they run into a batch of squirrels who intend to stop them. They have more than one encounter with squirrels. And the magician doesn't want to help Dalya.

Everyone grows a bit stronger as time goes on. Will Dalya ever get home? Will the other girl's father come and save her from her mean aunt?

I loved this middle-grade book about cats and time travel - and I even learned some new facts about Istanbul!

Dalya and the Magic Ink Bottle has to do with a mystery involving a curse, and I was not expecting the events surrounding the conclusion. It was totally unpredictable, which I loved about this book. Dalya and the other animal characters were super cute, too - I even came to love the conceited, magic-performing rat and the squirrel enemies!

The novel also features a heart-warming message about family and what "home" means to different people. Home is where the heart is, they say, which our main character has to figure out along with how to break the curse placed on her.

Overall, this was a mesmerizing read!

A magical story that me and my 7 year old really enjoyed. The focus of the story is of young Dalya travelling with her father to Istanbul to sell their family home. It’s an adventure for any 10 year old but made even more incredible when she discovers ink that can turn her into a time travelling cat!
As you can imagine, time travel is exciting on its own but it can also teach you a lot about family and friendship as Dalya finds out. The perfect story to read with your child at bedtime.

As long as you can read Dalya as a cat who mostly remembers she has paws instead of human hands but sometimes forgets and does things a cat should not be able to do, this book is magical. I loved all of her friends in Istanbul and I especially found delight in the different underground, specialized animal markets.

This was a really touching and cute story. Dalya goes to Istanbul with her father and ends up on a magical journey reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz. Through their trials and journeys her and her companions learn the meaning of friendship, family, and home, in a way that will easily resonate with children. I loved the tour we got of a few of the cities highlights, and the idea of each animal having their own Grand Bazaar was perfect. Overall this is a book that I will definitely be picking up for a few children I know.

My Rating: 4.5
I absolutely loved the magical vibe of this book. I think it's a great read for every age from a child to an adult as long as you like children's adventures type of stories.
In the book we follow Dalya, that has traveled together with her father to Istanbul for the first time in her life. She's expecting to spend more time with her Baba (since the divorce she hasn't seen her father that many times) but unfortunately it seems that her dad only cares about work. In a moment of frustration, Dalya finds a magic bottle and makes a wish: shes wishes to go home.
However things don't go as planned and from then on the true story and adventure starts.
I loved every thing character in this book and the message in it it's also so beautiful. It portraits family and specially friendship in such a different way.
I would totally recommend this book if you have a child, this would be the perfect bed time story.