Wini has spent her entire life being punished for the curse her mother cast on the entire town, but she’s managed to stay mostly happy and be herself. Family is everything to Wini, which is why she’s casting a love spell that’ll allow them to have more access to the hardest ingredient to come by: love. Unfortunately for her, the love spell doesn’t exactly go as planned, and now the entire town is in danger. Now she’s keeping her lips sealed so that she doesn’t scare off her new friend, Kal, who just moved to town with her family. Meanwhile, Kal is dealing with her own problems like her severe anxiety, her dad always ditching her, and making sure no one knows that she’s befriended a woman trapped in a book she found.
We follow Wini and Kal through their rotating perspectives as we’re also introduced to the world of enchanters. The story starts out pretty slow, but we were being introduced to the characters, the town, and the paranormal mythology. Wini has been going to an enchanter school and learning under her family’s watch and guidance while Kal is just starting to learn about her abilities. They’re both very lonely characters for very different reasons, and I think a lot of readers are going to identify with them whether or not they have a lot of friends.
Wini and Kal become friends after they’re assigned a class project together. Kal is the new girl in town, and rather than befriending some of Wini’s bullies, they become fast friends while Kal learns how to use her magic. I really like their friendship, but it did seem rather one-sided at times as Wini seemed to be using Kal to put a stop to the love spell with unintended results. However, it’s a good example of how their age group don’t always realize the full extent of their actions even when they mean well.
Overall, it’s a good story, but the ending was anticlimactic and the villain wasn’t well developed. Even as a middle schooler, I would’ve gotten to the last page and said, that’s it? Without spoiling the story, the villains’ reasoning didn’t make sense and was barely explained. As far as I can tell, this seems to be a stand alone book, but it seems more like the first in a series. There’s so much more storytelling that can be done here, and I’m really interested in Kal’s magic and whether or not her grandpa will realize that there’s something weird going on with the Order he was once an agent for. While I wasn’t happy with the ending, I think there’s a ton of potential here, so I’m hoping there will be a second book at some point.
No comments:
Post a Comment