Review: Wayward by Ashley Girardi

Wayward (The Witch Wars Saga, #1)

Ashley Girardi

First published March 27th, 2011

Born without magic, seventeen-year-old Helena "Hex" Wayward is an embarrassment to her power-hungry relatives.

As the weakest member of the world's most deadly magical family, Hex learns early how to avoid confrontation. There's no defending herself against an errant curse or the pit-demon that her cousins like to summon during family reunions.

When the dark magic inside of her -- magic that she never dreamt even existed -- erupts in a violent display, it kills a member of a rival family. Now, Hex's family hopes to use her magic for their own sinister purposes and their enemies just want her dead. Abandoning her magic will leave Hex defenseless but she's seen how quickly power corrupts even the best intentions.

She has to make a choice:

Save her life or save her soul.

Ah man, up until at least three quarters through I was really enjoying this. But there are too many flaws in this book for me to justify giving more than 2 stars. I say three quarters through because I thought maybe those flaws would be explained or fixed during the story, but they weren't. It just wasn't all that exciting.

In of itself, the story is interesting. It's about witches, the most powerful witch - Wayward - to be exact, who doesn't agree to use her powers at all, never mind for evil. However, she's being forced into it by a deal she can't refuse. I love witches, them and necromancers are probably my favourite supernatural beings, but I found this one fell a bit flat and had a lot of inconsistencies.

For starters, I didn't understand why Wayward refused to use her powers, especially when it came to defending herself in a fight. Would someone know if she used them? Then why would she use magic to make a girl choke just cause she didn't like her? I didn't understand. Then there was her family - her siblings. Why was she so afraid of them? What was Marco planning to do to Sam? She was saying "eat her"… was that literal? Is he a witch or a vampire? Huh!!? o_O

The most prominent factor that I'll call a flaw, is that the villain wasn't very villainy. I wasn't afraid of him - or understood why Wayward was either. We're told he runs the Blooded - powerful beings that kill witches who tell humans about the magic - but we're never really made to be afraid of the Blooded, so why am I supposed to be afraid of Valentine again? I thought he was fairly sweet at the beginning. It also wasn't made clear if she hated him or secretly loved him.

Those were the biggest issues I had with the book. I did like the protagonist, Wayward, and the romance in the story. Wayward is a really likeable character. She wasn't full of herself or dumb. She knew what was going on and she didn't let anyone walk all over her. For the romance, I liked how it was realistic. It wasn't love at first sight or perfect from the get-go. It was normal, awkward high school romance; cute and sweet.

It wasn't horrible, it just never really captivated me. I was also let down by the ending and lack of deep plot development. If you really enjoy witches, you may still want to give it a try. You never know. 

2/5 hot espressos

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Review: Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton

Blood Magic (Blood Journals, #1)
Tessa Gratton
First published May 24th, 2011

For Nick Pardee and Silla Kennicot, the cemetery is the center of everything. 

Nick is a city boy angry at being forced to move back to the nowhere town of Yaleylah, Missouri where he grew up. He can’t help remembering his mom and the blood magic she practiced – memories he’s tried for five years to escape. Silla, though, doesn’t want to forget; her parents’ apparent murder-suicide left her numb and needing answers. When a book of magic spells in her dad’s handwriting appears on her doorstep, she sees her chance to unravel the mystery of their deaths.

Together they plunge into the world of dark magic, but when a hundred-year-old blood witch comes hunting for the bones of Silla’s parents and the spell book, Nick and Silla will have to let go of everything they believe about who they are, the nature of life and death, and the deadly secrets that hide in blood.

Blood Magic is about witches: Finally something other than Vampires and Werewolves! I liked it, I thought it was fun and fresh, but it wasn't enough to really compel me to say "you know, this is a very good book". It was missing something though I cant quite put my finger on it. Regardless, I still almost gave it a 4 star.

The plot is part magical lore, part mystery. Silla's parents died tragically, and although everyone is convinced it was a murder suicide, Silla is not. After receiving a spell book from Deacon, whoever that is - and to her amazement they're actually working- she's even more convinced that someone was involved in her parent's death.

The mystery part is what intrigued me the most. Everyone is made a suspect and even if I wanted to guess there were too many choices to even bother, so I just enjoyed it and kept reading. It was intriguing, and I was excited to see how it would all play out. A bit more than half way through though it was made obvious (to me anyways) who it was. I still enjoyed how it ended, the climax was fun and there were a few other little unforeseeable twists in there.

The narration went back and forth between the two protagonists, Silla and Nicholas, which is always fun. We get deeper into the characters' development that way. The romance between them was much better than I expected and played a big part in the story. They had a lot of chemistry and the "romantic" scenes were pretty intense. It was a nice change from the "we want to but we can't" themes we often see nowadays. As for the supporting characters, I didn't really care for them much. They weren't boring, but they didn't stand out either. Except for Lillith - what happened there, anyways? She was this mysterious character who I thought was going to be part of the twist or at least have some role in it, but then the author seemed to just forget about her; we never got any explanation about what part she was really playing in all of this - it can't be nothing. So I don't know? Maybe she has plans for her in the following books? Or maybe she's really just a mundane step mom (boring)? There was no hint of anything. It seems like a waste to not give her a cool twist. A reason to be. Anything. I guess I will read and see.

In addition to the two narrators, there were flashbacks of an old witch writing a journal of her life after learning about the magic. Those were really interesting until the very end where it got confusing. Maybe I just don't retain information well, but I wasn't completely following it all. I still got the twist and what happened to Silla's parents, I just wasn't sure about who the Deacon was. Maybe we didn't even find out yet? Either way it didn't feel very important so I didn't bother going back to reread it.

So it's nothing especially special (yes I said it!). If you want a change from the many vampire and werewolf (and lately - angel) books coming out, this is a nice change of pace. It's not perfect but it's still a good and refreshing story.

3/5 hot espressos

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