Thought I was gonna be talking about Romeo and Juliet hu? Well that's where your half right. First two books in the Wicked series Witch & Curse by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié. I got this book so long ago and always meant to pick it and read and just never did. This is a two book in one you can obviously just read Witch put it down and read Curse another time. Now its taking me a little longer to read both of them then I thought it would, and I hate leaving you guys with nothing, as I have been lately, so this is more a review for Witch: book one, and I'll have book 2 ready for review shortly at which for future reference I'll put a link in this post at the bottom.
First a quick summary, I would share with you the synopsis but I don't think that really gives an accurate one. When Holly Cather's life meets a tragedy killing her family and best friend, Holly has to go live with an aunt she never even knew she had and her family. Upon arriving at Seattle incidences continue to arise around her. Little does Holly know these accidents are in fact attacks sent to kill her, her aunt Marie-Claire, and twin cousins Amanda and Nicole, by a warlock Michael Devereaux, believing he could gain more power. Michael and his sons, Eli and Jeruard are of a long line of warlocks from centuries ago, while Holly, her aunt and cousins come from a long forgotten feuding family of witches the Cahor's. Unknowingly Holly and Jer are reincarnations of Isabeau and Jean from six hundred years ago and have visions and dreams of their lives.When you pick up a book written by two authors isn't it nice when you can't tell where one authors writing ends and the other begins. Well such is not the case here, I was able to tell one authors writing to the other don't know which one is which however, but you can tell its almost as if part it didn't get edited and sometimes it didn't flow at all. For instance the fist couple chapters of Witch one moment I'm reading about a rafting trip the next about some ritual and then some guy doing god knows what and back to the rafting (FYI if you ever want to go whitewater rafting I suggest you skip between page 10 through about 20 I think or you'll talk yourself out if and never do it.), I had to re read it to make any since and that barley helped, it didn't flow, it didn't go at all, there's characters you don't get why they're there or where they came from. Once I got past the second chapter it started to flow much nicer, and by nicer I mean it actually flowed.
As far as the Romeo and Juliet aspect, I actually stumbled on a video with one of the authors saying that it was kind of a retelling of it if the families were witches and warlocks. Well after a while you do see similarities, you have a two rival families, the young love, though that is kinda on the fence. The school the girls go to is doing the play of which Nicole gets the lead part, and there's even a reference to the Leonardo DiCaprio version or Romeo and Juliet (which I'm not ashamed to say I have and its not the best I could write a whole review on whats wrong with it, but this isn't about that), but a retelling I don't know maybe its to early in the series cause the young love its kinda there and its kinda not.
There is hardly any relationship between our supposedly 'love' interest. Holly and Jer meet, have a flash back of Isabeau and Jean, don't see or speak to each other for month's, and when they see each other for the second time they're all but two pieces of clothing from doing the dirty deed for no apparent reason, hello can you say 'jailbait', Holly is 17, Jer is in college, also why, they've saw each other one time for all of ten seconds. Apparently Jer sent things to help ward off the attacks and sent messages to Holly in her dreams but we get NONE of that we just get told this in one little sentence, they don't go into what these talks are about or anything. There's is more for Isabeau and Jean but not by much, they are married through the wishes of their parents each trying to gain one thing or another through it, and yet they do fall in love with each other but with Jean its like back and forth with him. There isn't a lot of character background for any of the characters, the twins couldn't be more different and Nicole often doesn't even acknowledge Amanda, first off being different from each other I can handle, but isn't there a special bond with twins, sometimes I felt like why write these two as twins when they couldn't care less about it, there's none of that twin bond there.
I know I already mentioned the editing but I can't not mention this one part. Holly is in a Rite Aid store where she gets attacked by things flying off the shelves everything flying at her one of these things that are flying at her are knives, yes I said Knives, though it added to the danger of the situation, let me ask you when was the the last time you walked into a store, any store, and just saw KNIVES laying around on a shelf, not in a box or an impossible to open plastic case? Uhhh Hello! Stores don't do that, if they did they're in for a serious case of mass murder, they don't want some guy just walking in picking up a knife and start killing people, come on! So that kind of bugged me and after I read that part I was just sitting there for like five minutes thinking 'why the Hell would a store have knives like that' and why would a Rite Aid have knives. So its like that didn't get any edit at all.
In lite of not having only negative to say about this, the story as a whole is actually rather good and it was somewhat enjoyable. Though I was able to tell one author from the other I like one of them, obviously I don't know who but I like whose ever writing it was far better than the writing that seemed it wasn't edited. I liked the flash backs to six hundred years ago though the first few times it transactions to it could of been better but then that transaction did get better, the author that wrote those flash backs is the one I like there was nice detail, and the dialog was nice for the time period it was in.
I think I know why I never picked it up to read, though it didn't stop me from buying it, I think something was telling me I wouldn't like it that much. I hope you enjoyed this review. You can check out the review for Curse here.
