Monday, February 24, 2014

Falling Under The Spell, or Spelled Asleep?





Lately, I have not been in the mood to read anything that was a teenage romance unless it had a huge supernatural element to it. Anyone who knows me knows I am slightly obsessed with the paranormal--yea, I believe in ghosts, witches, vampires, etc. So after reading a few heavily supernatural books I found myself in the mood for something a bit on the lighter side of things, and that was when I decided to start Spellbound by Cara Lynn Shultz. And naturally because I am a little OCD I decided to pick up the sequel Spellcaster. 

Let me start by saying that I genuinely enjoyed Spellbound; it was one of those quick, engaging reads that I finished in about a day. Both novels, follow the ancient, doomed love story of it's main characters Brendan and Emma. As is pretty typical in these types of books, Brendan is the super-hot  and rich James Dean type and Emma is the slightly damaged heroine.

What I loved about Spellbound was that it played on all of latent teen girl fantasies. Hot dude (check); rich (check); badass (check); ready to swoop in at a moments notice and save the girl he loves (check and check). Basically, if I could make a man it would be Brendan.

Spellbound, kept it moving, at no point in the story did I feel bogged down or bored by the plot. It was a fun mixture of serious and ridiculous. Obviously, there were moments when I needed to suspend belief, but they were not that vast.

I'd say Spellbound  was a 7/10.




Let's move on to Spellcaster. First, it took me over a week to complete the book and despite the fact that I work fulltime and do a slew of other things I'm usually averaging 2-3 books a week. Usually, I am especially fast when it comes to reading sequel. Spellcaster, just did not do it for me. The plot felt contrived and forced--all  the sudden Emma is a badass witch and Brendan's player past comes back to haunt them both.

I'll break it down for you guys--there was a very poignant sequel that needed to be written following the events of Spellbound and this really was not it. Not only was the plot of this novel incredibly boring, it very much so moved away from the momentum and the general ideology created by it predecessor.

4/10

Basically, read Spellbound but go ahead and skip Spellcaster.

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