Creative Bookcase Building Set, Cafe House Building Block Toy Gift for Adults,Mini Bricks

I enjoyed the time it took to put this together. It also looks really nice on my bookshelf

I have built 100s of lego sets and faux lego sets. I wanted to like this one because it could have been perfect in my library. Let me spoil the end for you – it is far too flimsy and lightweight to ever be a bookend. Not even for the smallest collection of children’s books.The instructions are decent, but the color quality is only about 80%. At several points, I had to read ahead to figure out if I had a brown, dark brown, or red piece. At one point, I guessed wrong, and now a brown door is red (but I don’t care enough to disassemble it). Luckily I didn’t disassemble it, because these are micro blocks, and I don’t have a brick separator at that size. For some reason, most faux sets don’t include that cheap piece of plastic, which would really improve the ease of building.The first four books, from left to right, are fine. The build quality is okay, and the detail is moderate on the places where the books open up, and two have little trays for “hidden” storage spots. It’s at least cute, and the builds are not repetitive. However, ease of the build was lacking. At multiple points, I was left trying to make hard connections on flimsy, unreinforced pieces, and they just fell apart in my hands.It was very frustrating when it came to assembling the three walls of the books because until the very last structural pieces were added, they were prone to crumble.The last book was a quick build, although plagued with the same structural problems as the others during construction. However, it sits at the very edge of the base, and it is supposed to lean due to a row of wedges on the base. The plate is too small and the wedges too short to create more than a tiny lean; it just looks like I made a mistake putting the book there; it does not look intentional. Because it is right on the edge, it also falls over regularly.Plus, the very worst part is that dang tree. If I look at it sideways, it falls apart. Entire branches drop off if I breathe on it wrong. I built it twice because I was sure I had to have made a mistake for it to be this flimsy, but it’s just crap.Note that many of the cute “book” details on the box image are missing from some product images (titles/designs/etc). That is because they are all stickers. They are a little hard to peel off the sheet and for two, they were a hair too large and hard to place, but otherwise, they’re stickers with the normal amount of frustration.Finally, the base of this bugs me. It is never going to be an actual bookend. It could, perhaps, sit decoratively with something in between the two halves, but it would have no actual function. However, the base is split in two to accommodate the “bookend” fantasy. Fine. But there is no place to add a connection point or a stop to line up the two halves and keep them together if you want to display them together (and it did not come with adequate extra pieces to construct something like that).So, the build is mostly fun, but not novel, and with some seriously frustrating points, but it does come together to make a cute display (except for the tree; nothing redeems the tree). A teen might enjoy this, but anyone younger is not going to be able to manage the combo of micro blocks, poor building techniques, vagueness in some instructions, and a need to rebuild repeatedly when components crumble during assembly and need rebuilt.

This is a fun set to build. The bags are clearly numbered. There is even a bag that has extra pieces. It is a great set for an adult or teen. Since it’s micro blocks this would not be good for a child. I did get frustrated at times while building this but overall it is a fun build and I like how it looks.