I’ve had this one stuffed in the back of my shelves for ages.  I bought it when Walden books (a Borders subsidiary still existed) that should show you how long it was.  But I never read it.  Don’t know why.  Just one of those perpetual backlist books.  But when I decided to participate in Blogger Blackout I decided to focus my attention on backlist titles.  And the fact that this is Halloween week made this title perfect to read. Going in: lots of high hopes.  Witches.  Identity.  Family.  Three things that should’ve made this book awesome.

 

This book preaching itself to me.

 

Result: Okay, but flawed. To be fair, it had a lot going for it.  I enjoyed the depiction of magic in this book.  I felt like MacCullough did an excellent job explaining how things worked in her world.  And I liked how magic had a family connection.  And that was another thing I had to give this book credit for: family. It’s rare in a YA book where family plays such a prominent role.  So, anytime there is a book that feature it I give it a big fat plus mark on my score card. However, despite the fact that there is a major dose of family drama and angst in this book, it also suffers from typical YA cliches too.

Ugh, the main character.  At first I really liked Tamsin but then she started to get plagued by the things that your stereotypical YA main character gets plagued with: savior concept, insta love,  you don’t know how special and unique you are, while being TSTL.  Also, while I understood why she was upset for not having a gift.  I grew annoyed with her angsting.  I was hoping she’d be awesome on her own without magic.  But of course not…rolls eyes. I will say that while the romance in this book is insta love at best, I was able to tolerate it.  Mainly becuase overall it was more or less a blip in the book.  If you’re going to do insta love this is how you do it.  It’s not that annoying when the romance isn’t portrayed as one true love nonsense and the love interest isn’t a total jerk. Pacing also plagued this book.  While I like the fact that it is mercifully short, the first half of the book dragged.  And then everything after that….

Hello, whiplash. And whiplash is bad enough on it’s own, but when you involve time travel that has so many plot holes that not even the Back to the Future trilogy can make sense of it, you have issues. Even with these faults though, this is a fun book.  I’m sure a lot of people will love it and continue on to read it’s sequel.  Do I have plans on reading it…maybe if it’s at the library, but I don’t have an imminent need to read it right at this moment.  It’s a good book with faults.  It’s not  the most memorable book, but if you’re in a witchy mood you might want to give this a try.

Overall Rating: B- slightly above average.

This was quite a surprise, truly. In some ways it reminded me of the Witching Savannah books, The Line - J.D. Horn, but I liked the MC more here and the mythology around the family.

The Good:

• Tamsin- she's a great main character, not perfect, but not too stupid to live either.
• Girl on Girl Friendship- Agatha exists throughout the book and not just as a foil to Tam or just as bait for a bad guy.
• Lurve- There's a little bit of romance, and the romantic interest is charming. No instalove. No stalking. No maudlin "I cannot live without yoooooou" draaaama
• Magic- (I guess I should say Talent instead of magic.) I really enjoyed the way MacCullough constructed the magic in the story. There were rules and she followed them.

The Not as Good:

• Big Bad- I felt like the first book barely scratched the surface of who and why. While I know there's a sequel (which I'll be getting soon) and you don't want to give everything away right at the start, I didn't feel like we had any real idea of the Big Bad's goal. I mean,
  I know sort of generally that he wants his mag-oops, sorry, Talent back, but we don't have any real idea of what happened.
  (spoiler show) It felt more like a set up, like the two books were split into two and this one wasn't the full story.
• POV- This was told from Tamsin's point of view, which works for me, but it leaves the reader at a disadvantage as she doesn't know the what's of things either. Normally this is an opportunity for the reader to find out as the MC is discovering information, but the matter at hand is so encompassing (as it should be) that there's little time for Tamsin (and so the reader) to really learn about the full mythology and history. 

All in all though, as I mentioned in my update yesterday, this is a fun read that I flew through. If you're looking for something fun and witchy this is a great choice, highly recommend. Now, off to buy the sequel Always a Witch

After finishing up We Were Liars, I was looking for something fun. I mean, not that WWL wasn't fun, it kinda was, but it kinda wasn't and I can't say any more or I'll be f--