Rating: WARTY!
From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
Errata:
“...not a plant like a Fichus or Gardenia.” A fichu is a square of lace used to preserve modesty on low-cut gowns in the 18th and 19th century. I believe the author meant ficus.
“I had no control over a porcupine wandering into my neighborhood in rural England. They live there." No, they don’t! Britain has no porcupines! There are porcupines around the Mediterranean, but southern Europe is as far north as they get. Britain has hedgehogs which are unrelated to porcupines and much more cute. I had a couple as pets growing up there.
“...he flexed his bicep.” Doubtful! Biceps, yes, bicep? Not so much! I don't see how you can have a character who almost chides someone for not using 'whom' and then doesn't know that the bicep is only one part of the biceps which is the muscle that gets flexed! In another part of the novel I read, "Recommended? By whom?" Seriously, no one but the most pretentious people use that in speech, and you certainly don't hear it from a 16-year old in juvie.
“You’re itching is driving you crazy” - confusion of 'your' and 'you’re'.
Reading this book was like a roller-coaster in terms of my wanting to rate it a worthy read, and not. I kept changing my mind and I had multiple issues with it. In the end that;s what decided it. I read the thing the whole way through - except for the epilogue (I don't do epilogues or prologues) and I didn't hate it and in general the writing wasn't awful either, and I enjoyed some of the characters, but in the end, there were so many issues that I can't in good conscience rate it positively.
I like stories where a team gets together to achieve an end. I just published one myself, so I was a bit disappointed that what seemed to be a team forming here ended-up not becoming one. On the other hand I liked the main character - for the most part. She was smart and amusing and strong, which is a big plus for me, but countering that were the parts of the book where she was effectively infantilized by the trope YA guy named, of all things, Logan. I could have done without him. So that's the way this story hit me all along - one time I was up for it, the next I was having grave misgivings about it.
At one point Logan, the main character's love interest, says, “I was raised to respect and protect women." This turned me off the story because it became yet another YA story where the girl is the maiden in distress and the big tough guy is the white knight coming to save and protect her! Genevieve, the main character, needed no one's protection. I can see a guy saying that - guys do say those kinds of things, but the fact that there was no push-back from Genevieve was what was wrong. We need to get past this idea that women are universally weak and helpless and in every case, need a strong man to take care of them. It's that kind of thinking that leads to abuses: putting women on a pedestal on the one hand and slapping them with the other.
In another instance, I read, "Logan leapt to his feet and extended his hand to help me up." Again this suggests Genevieve is the weak one who needs the help. I know some people might view this as merely being gentlemanly, but unless you have a later scene where Genevieve extends a hand to help Logan up, this bias against women being capable of taking care of themselves is really an abuse. If Logan respects women, why does he constantly treat them like they're always in need of help? It felt sexist, especially in this case, given how powerful Genevieve truly is. In another instance, Logan said, "I don't want you going anywhere without me...Someone needs to be with you to protect you." Again with the infantilization. it was almost as nauseating as how many times characters rolled their eyes in this book or the incessant number of times Genevieve opened or closed her eyes. It was like she was doing that constantly!
Her power was also an issue in that she felt rather like a 'special snowflake' - like she never had to work for a thing; everything she tried to do was a great success, powers came to her just when she needed them, and she always had the right spell for the job despite her evidently substandard education on the topic. It was a bit too much. She never had to struggle for anything.
I liked the idea of witches in juvie. That's what drew me to the story in the first place. It was different, original, and interesting. The students were captive, but they were expected to follow an academic schedule - and they had a surprising amount of freedom, but their magical powers were somehow suppressed so they could not use them - and yes, these witches seemed more like magicians than witches. Not that the book description helped, since it wasn't at all honest in describing what happened: "Now the administration needs Genevieve’s help to find a student/inmate who escaped." No, they don't! They never asked her to do that. She did it all by herself!
That didn't detract from the story for me, but it does reinforce my own tack in avoiding Big Publishing™ because the people who write the back cover blurbs seem never to have actually read the story they're describing, and worse, the people who illustrate the front cover seem never to have read it either. I know those who do not self-publish have little say in their covers or book blurbs, which is why I pay zero attention to the front cover when deciding which books I want to read. They're highly misleading, and I laugh at authors who have dramatic cover reveals because they're so pathetic and juvenile. In this case, the cover showed a young woman with straight black hair, yet the antagonist in this novel has wavy brown hair. I honestly don't see how you can confuse the two. I guess it wasn't edgy enough for the cover photographer, huh? They'd rather misrepresent it.
But enough about the cover. I read a book for the content, not for the pretty picture on the front. One of the first issues I had with this, other than the silly trope of having spells cast in rhyme, was the fact that this juvenile witch detention center had an off-limits library! What? Why? Why would they put dangerous books in a detention center that could potentially enable these witches to escape? It made zero sense. A regular library? Yes! An off-limits one? No!
Though this wasn't a high-school, another issue (other than purloining 'muggles' from JK Rowling and changing one letter to make it somehow 'different') was the trope high-school bully, in the form of a teacher who routinely brutalized the children by subtly undermining their education, and using their failures to add months onto their sentences. I know there needs to be a villain in these stories, but this felt like lazy writing, with a teacher having that much power and evidently no review or oversight. It just felt like too much.
One of the issues I have with magical novels is that the authors tend not to think things through and truly envision what a world with magical powers would be like - even one where magic is kept hidden from the public). With few exceptions, they tend to have the world be exactly the way it is today, just with the addition of the magicians, or witches, or whatever, and it really doesn't work very well.
For example, in this story, there was a section where Genevieve says, “At least I didn’t live in Centralia, Pennsylvania. That town is deserted because of a coal fire that’s been burning underground since nineteen sixty-two." This is true. In fact recently, there was an article on CNN's website that talked about a stretch of abandoned highway there which has been literally covered in graffiti and has become a tourist attraction, but the authorities are covering it up because it's not safe for tourism.
So far so good, but this novel isn't our world: this is a world where there are witches with powerful magic, and yet none of the witches have been out there to try and stop the burning? If you're going to reference real-world events, then then it seems to me to necessitate a witch's perspective to go along with it. Why haven't the witches stopped the burning? Do they not care? Can they not do it? To suggest there are immensely powerful witches and yet this fire still burns, like the witches frankly don't give a damn, leaves a hole in the story for me. I think you really need to address why witches didn't make a difference. Or not mention the situation at all.
There was an instance where Genevieve is trying to hide behind a pole and I read, "I had to become invisible - something I’d never tried before, or skinnier - something every witch has tried with varying success.” This felt like body-shaming - that witches are universally overweight, or think they are. This felt like something that could have passed unmentioned, or if you have to mention it, then maybe say some witches have tried it. To call out every witch and suggest they're overweight or have a poor self-image felt like an awful thing for a female author to do to her fellow females.
So while this writer can write and tell a decent story in general terms, for me there were far too many loose ends and examples of thoughtless writing for me to rate this as a worthy read. I wish the author all the best in her career, because based on this one, I think she has some good stories to tell, but this particular one was too hobbled with issues to fly and sad as it makes me, I can't commend it as a worthy read.
